Preamble

Preamble

PRIVATE BUSINESS

Oral Answers to Questions — AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

Commissioner Gundelach

Milking Herd

Home Timber Products

National Farmers' Union

European Community (Council of Agriculture Ministers)

Potato Marketing Board

Dairy Trade Federation

Bovine Tuberculosis (Badgers)

National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers

Veal

European Community (Price Review)

Oral Answers to Questions — TUC

Oral Answers to Questions — PRIME MINISTER (ENGAGEMENTS)

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

BILL PRESENTED

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

CONSOLIDATED FUND (No. 2) BILL

NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE

UNITED NATIONS PEACEKEEPING

MERSEYSIDE (GOVERNMENT AID)

FLOOD AND STORM EMERGENCY RELIEF

ROYAL NAVY AND ROYAL MARINES (PAY)

EUROPEAN AIRBUS PROGRAMME

CRIMINAL TRIALS

PEACHEY PROPERTY CORPORATION LIMITED

ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE (EMERGENCY PROVISIONS) (SCOTLAND) BILL

LIGHTHOUSE SERVICE (PAY)

Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

Preamble

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

BRITISH RAILWAYS (NO. 2) BILL (By Order)

Order for Second Reading read

To be read a Second time upon Thursday, 29 March

CHESHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL BILL [Lords] (By Order)

EAST KILBRIDE DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL (By Order)

GREATER LONDON COUNCIL (GENERAL POWERS) BILL (By Order)

Orders for Second Reading read

To be read a Second time upon Thursday next

LONDON TRANSPORT BILL (By Order)

Order for Second Reading read

To be read a Second time upon Thursday 29 March

Oral Answers to Questions — AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

Commissioner Gundelach

Mr. Neubert: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he intends next to meet Commissioner Gundelach of the European Economic Community.

The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. John Silkin): I expect to see Commissioner Gundelach tomorrow in Hull.

Mr. Neubert: Is it not clear that whatever else the Minister and his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister brought back from Paris, it was not an agreement to freeze food prices? What constructive steps are the Government taking to achieve that end? Will the Minister confirm that such a policy will make sense only if selectively directed against commodities which are in persistent and excessive surplus?

Mr. Silkin: My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister sought to persuade the other European partners of the necessity for a freeze in prices. He may well have done so. The reaction to that in Paris is neither here nor there. It is the reaction in the Agriculture Council which is important. I expect a great deal of difficulty in obtaining a freeze this year. However, we intend to go for it, and we shall go for it. The difficulty lies, always in defining, at any particular moment, what commodities will be in structural surplus some years ahead. It is far better, at a time like this, to go for a common price freeze. I must admit that I might make an exception in the case of silkworms.

Mr. Powell: Will the right hon. Gentleman make it clear to the Commission that in this, the third year of a restriction on fishing in the Irish Sea, not only British fishermen generally but those of County Down, both inshore and skiff, deserve, and need, a larger share of the available catch? Is he aware that if he has any trouble from the Commission, or from


the European Court, many thousands of fishermen of County Down and of the Mourne will want to know the reason why?

Mr. Silkin: I am aware of what the right hon. Gentleman is asking. I had an enjoyable and informative series of meetings in the Province towards the end of last year. I shall certainly do my best, since I shall be attending a fishing conference tomorrow in Hull, to make a number of the points that the right hon. Gentleman has made.

Mr. Torney: When my right hon. Friend meets Mr. Gundelach, will he check on the allegation made this lunch-time, I believe, on television or radio, by the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath) to the effect that about £2,400 millions—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must not seek to give information. He must ask a question.

Mr. Torney: I shall try to rephrase that, Mr. Speaker. Is my right hon. Friend aware of the allegation made by the right hon. Member for Sidcup on the media this lunchtime to the effect that £2,400 million has been received by Britain from the regional and social development fund since 1972? Does he know whether there is any truth in this allegation, and can be explain the position?

Mr. Silkin: I was made aware of what the right hon. Gentleman said. He was speaking in the context of the high payments made by the United Kingdom in the farm budget, and trying to balance one against the other. Fortunately for his argument, he did not give the full figures. If he had done so it might have looked different. We have received £2,400 million since 1972, but we have paid £3,200 million into the farm budget. About two-thirds of that £2,400 million is in the form of loans, and not grants and this has been paid back. The House may see the real sense of this when it is realised that, on the latest figures, the United Kingdom has contributed about £23 million towards support for olive oil, and received £20 million back in the regional and social development fund.

Mr. Peyton: That was an interesting diversion. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman.

would care to return to the central issue of British agriculture and explain and assess the damage which has been sustained by the agriculture industry as a result of his Government's rotten handling of the economy.

Mr. Silkin: I regard the right hon. Member's question as a diversion. The Question is about what I have to say to Commissioner Gundelach. I shall have to discuss with him the issues raised by the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath). That is important. I do not see how the right hon. Gentleman's supplementary question arises from the original Question. It may arise from a later Question.

Milking Herd

Mr. Shepherd: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what he estimates to be the size of the United Kingdom milking herd.

The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. E S. Bishop): The provisional results from the December 1978 census showed that there were 3,384,000 cows in the United Kingdom milking herd.

Mr. Shepherd: Does the Minister agree that if the hopes for milk expressed in the White Paper are to be met there must be no reduction in the milking herd? Does he recognise the concern of United Kingdom producers that the current co-responsibility levy proposals could be an impossible impost? Will he make it clear to the House that his right hon. Friend's firm resolve is to refuse to accept these co-responsibility proposals, since the Minister's anwer to the Select Committee on European legislation the other day made that anything but clear?

Mr. Bishop: I thought there was no doubt and that my right hon. Friend and I had made the position clear. If the proposals of the Commission for CAP prices were adopted, they could have a substantial effect on production in the United Kingdom. The proposed levels of co-responsibility levy would seriously depress our producers' margins. The proposed exemptions from the levy would discriminate heavily against the larger and more efficient producers in the United Kingdom. This is a discrimination against us and against efficiency. We shall oppose it strongly.

Mr. Hardy: The House will be glad to hear what my right hon. Friend has said. Will he confirm that the proposed levy is the opposite of what we seek? Can he confirm that in the areas where the levy will be applied infrequently milk production will be discouraged? Can he also ensure that in the areas where the levy will normally be experienced milk production will be sustained?

Mr. Bishop: I agree with my hon. Friend. If the Community is to overcome some of its basic problems we must deal with the price structure and surpluses. We must also ensure that the more efficient countries have a chance to produce more and that the less efficient produce less. The co-responsibility levy works in the opposite direction.

Mr. Watt: Can the Minister tell British dairy farmers, and more particularly their bankers, why they should continue to invest in milk production when costs are increasing by 17 per cent., when money is costing 16 per cent. and when the best that the Minister can offer is a 5 per cent. devaluation of the green pound?

Mr. Bishop: At least that is a step in the right direction. There is growing confidence in the dairy industry, because the herd size has increased in recent years and the production of milk is at a record level. If there had been more take-up of school milk in Tory-controlled areas consumption of milk would have been even higher. We have a good record and there are good prospects.

Mr. Jopling: We agree that there should be a price freeze on milk, but will the Minister make clear what he did not make clear when he gave evidence to the Scrutiny Committee, namely that the Government will fight the proposals for the co-responsibility levy?

Mr. Bishop: In the Scrutiny Committee I was commenting on the report of the Commission. The price negotiations are under way, and that is another aspect. We have made clear where we stand on this matter.

Home Timber Products

Mr. Hardy: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will take steps to ensure that home timber pro-

ducts will meet a greater and growing share of national requirements.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Gavin Strang): I refer my hon. Friend to the report to the Forestry Commissioners entitled"The Wood Production Outlook in Britain ". Consultations with interested parties on the report are now in progress and my right hon. Friends will decide on further steps in the light of these.

Mr. Hardy: Given the rapid rate and the often permanently ruinous character of the operations involved in the clearance of the world's forests, is it not clear that even more urgent consideration should be given to the long-term improvement of our home timber production?

Mr. Strang: I agree with my hon. Friend. That is why we attach importance to the discussions to which I have referred. My hon. Friend will acknowledge that planting in the private sector is now recovering significantly in the light of the steps which the Government have taken. Our concern must be to sustain a high level of planting in the public sector.

Mr. Gwynfor Evans: Is the Minister aware that nearly 600,000 acres of Welsh land are planted with trees, which often take over the best pasture land, mixed farms and even arable land? Is he aware that, in spite of all that timber, there is not one major industry which is based on the timber that we produce?

Mr. Strang: I agree that it is easy to talk about increasing the acreage of land devoted to planting. It is more difficult to identify those areas where there is no competition with sheep rearing. The industry is going through a difficult period, and it is difficult to imagine that there will be a substantial investment in the near future.

Mr. Watkinson: Does my hon. Friend accept that although the industrial functions of timber are of overriding importance, our forests provide important environmental and recreational functions? Is he aware that more than 1 million people visited the Forest of Dean last year for recreational purposes? Will he build on the developments which the Forestry Commission have begun, particularly by the use of log cabins?

Mr. Strang: Yes. We have cause to be proud of the Forestry Commision in this context. Its recreational provisions represent public enterprise at its best. We are determined that the Forestry Commission, and not only private interests, should reap the benefits of the profits from such developments.

Mr. Peyton: Will the hon. Member bear in mind that there is a wide and growing agreement on both sides of the House that our present production of timber is miserably inadequate? Does he agree that it is not a question only of competition between public and private interests? Does he agree that it is also a question of how we increase our miserably inadequate level of production? Will the Minister apply his mind to how the private sector can be encouraged to plant more and obtain more benefit from the forests?

Mr. Strang: The right hon. Gentleman talks as if he has paid no attention to the important policy statements which the Government have made in the last two or three years. We have given substantial tax concessions to private forestry, and we have introduced a new grant scheme. Only this morning the chairman of the Forestry Commission, whom I met in my office, assured me that the evidence indicates that the private sector is expanding in response to those inducements.

Mr. Peyton: Will the Minister do better than to congratulate himself on having repaired the damage that his Government have done?

Mr. Strang: The right hon. Member is fair in implying that there is broad agreement between both Front Benches that increased planting is desirable. It looks as if we have things broadly right for the private sector. The problem that looms in the next few years is that the Forestry Commission will run out of land to maintain its planting programme.

National Farmers' Union

Mr. Haselhurst: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he last met the president of the National Farmers' Union.

Mr. John Silkin: I met the president of the National Farmers' Union on 26 February.

Mr. Haselhurst: Did the right hon. Gentleman have discussions with Mr. Butler about the state of pig farming and the pigmeat industry? Was he able to report any progress on the level of MCAs and the calculation of the pigmeat coefficient? Unless something is done soon, the long-term prospects for the pig breeding herd are poor.

Mr. Silkin: Yes, although, as the hon. Gentleman will understand, the pig breeding herd has increased by about 44,000 in the past year. The problem will be—and is—much more with the pig processors. That, of course, has repercussions for breeding. Therefore, it is important to deal with a further recalculation of the pigmeat MCAs. We discussed this matter, and I hope that when we return to the subject of price fixing on Monday week a strong stand will be taken not only by United Kingdom but by the Italian and French Ministers. From discussions that I have had with them I believe that that will be the case.

Mr. Corbett: Was the Minister able to discuss with Mr. Butler his views on the inter-departmental review on the export of live animals for slaughter and further fattening, which has been published for almost 12 months? Has he been able to indicate to the National Farmers' Union both his views and those of many Members of the House—and certainly millions of people outside—who are determined to bring this vile trade to a speedy end?

Mr. Silkin: That was not on the agenda for 26 February but I discussed this with Mr. Butler's predecessor, Sir Henry Plumb, some time ago. I put to him the basis of a carcase trade for the whole of Europe. Whether they are right or wrong from the welfare point of view. I understand the argument of many farmers that the United Kingdom should not be prejudiced by what occurs in the rest of the Community. I realise that others might get the trade if we were to stop it, which in the end would mean that while we could say that we had no involvement with the trade, the same number of calves or sheep might still be exported. Therefore, the real question is the carcase trade, which is a matter that I have also taken up with the Commission.

Mr. Spearing: When my right hon. Friend meets Mr. Butler, will he remind


him that 15 million tons of grain and 2½ millions tons of sugar, which together with surplus milk products will cost the EEC £3 billion to dump on the world market, are being exported in the current year? Will he ask Mr. Butler how he thinks British farmers can expand when there are surpluses, particularly in the areas that I have mentioned, and remind him that the sum does not encourage competition in the EEC?

Mr. Silkin: The question of surpluses came up in discussions between Mr. Butler and myself. I was pleased to find that on this occasion he took the same point of view as Her Majesty's Government, namely, that there should be a freeze until products and structural surpluses were reduced to the proper levels.

Mr. Charles Morrison: I have no doubt that when the Minister last met Mr. Butler they talked about the green pound among other things. Does the right hon. Gentleman consider that a devaluation of 5 per cent. is adequate to meet the current needs of British agriculture?

Mr. Silkin: As I have told the House many times, one has to judge a devaluation of the green pound, not simply in the context of what farmers require or need but in a general context. I believe that there should be a devaluation of the green pound on various occasions—possibly at different times during the year. It is, therefore, very important that we consider the question in relation to price fixing.
I do not regard 15 per cent., with its inevitable repercussion of a 17·3 per cent. increase in support prices, as being at all realistic or, indeed, justified. Five per cent. at this moment, if it can be obtained—as I believe it can—before the price fixing, is something well on the way. But I would always look at that in the light of the national interest and would never be averse to saying either that we should have another devaluation or that we should not.

Mr. Peyton: What will the right hon. Gentleman ask for now? Secondly, what will he do to recover for individual countries the right, which they used to have until last year, to take adjusting action on their own initiative?

Mr. Silkin: On the first point, I think that I have already made it clear to the

House—I certainly did in my recent statement—that I have already asked for a 5 per cent. devaluation of the green pound and that I want that before the price fixing. When I look at the price fixing, I can always make up my mind according to the situation at that time, but this 5 per cent. seemed to be an essential before the price fixing. I believe that that answers the right hon. Gentleman's point about the right of an individual country to decide, of its own volition and in its own national interest, when it should make a green currency devaluation. I shall fight for that, and I am glad that the Italian Government take exactly the same view.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I must warn the House that we are running very slow indeed, and I fear, with respect, that answers are a bit long.

European Community (Council of Agriculture Ministers)

Mr. Farr: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when next he will attend a meeting of the Council of Agriculture Ministers of the European Economic Community.

Sir John Langford-Holt: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when next he will attend a meeting of the Council of Agriculture Ministers of the European Economic Community.

Mr. Gould: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he expects next to meet his European Economic Community colleagues.

Mr. John Silkin: On 26 and 27 March.

Mr. Farr: Is the Minister aware that some weeks ago he spoke about the proposed devaluation of the green pound by 5 per cent. and that in the interim we have had one of the most savage, severe and expensive winters for British farming for many decades? Has he taken that into account, and does he think that 5 per cent. is adequate to meet the bill?

Mr. Silkin: There is another factor that must be taken into account, and that is why it is much better to look at the situation when we arrive at it and not in advance. The other factor to be taken into account is the strengthening of the pound sterling. The basis of that is that


there has been a cut in the competitive rates between this country and its European partners. When I come to the price fixing, and thereafter—assuming that I shall have managed to preserve the right of a country to devalue when it wishes—I shall look at the matter in the national interest.

Sir J. Langford-Holt: In order to assess the value of these Council meetings, can the right hon. Gentleman say whether it remains his policy that the United Kingdom should withdraw from the European Community as soon as possible?

Mr. Silkin: It was never my policy—it was always my view. That view, I regret to say, was a minority view in the referendum which took place, if my memory serves me correctly, in 1975. My views on the Common Market remain what they have always been.

Mr. Gould: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is a widespread belief in Common Market capitals—which was lent considerable support by the Leader of the Opposition yesterday—that a Conservative Government would be much more pliant than the present Government on CAP matters and would be much less concerned about protecting national interests? Will my right hon. Friend make it clear to his EEC colleagues that when he uses a little abrasion to wear down Common Market food prices he may not have the support of the Conservative Front Bench but he does have the support of the whole of the Labour Party and virtually the whole country?

Mr. Silkin:: Probably my best use of time in the Council is simply to get on with the job. I promise my hon. Friend that I shall do that.

Mr. Marten: Can the Minister bring us up to date on the proposal for a sheep-meat regime? Has he made it clear to the Community that the House is unlikely to agree to anything that disadvantages New Zealand?

Mr. Silkin: The sheepmeat regime has been progressing very slowly. If one can talk about a regime dragging its feet, it has been doing so for about two years. Whenever the question arises I have made three basic points, which I shall put in order of priority as I see them: first, the protection of New Zealand; secondly, the

protection of our own farmers; and, thirdly, the protection of our consumers.

Mr. Heffer: When my right hon. Friend next goes to the Agriculture Council, will he take with him a copy of the Labour Party's direct elections manifesto and show it to the Agriculture Ministers in Europe? In particular, will he point out that part of the manifesto which says that if, in the event, we cannot get the fundamental changes in the CAP that are essential, not only for Britain but for Europe as a whole, we must reconsider our position and that, as some of us feel, we may have to come out?

Mr. Silkin: I always get the feeling that some of my colleagues in the Agriculture Council have read the manifesto even before I have. I am glad that my hon. Friend mentioned Europe because, curiously, this is not only a British consideration. The problem of dealing with absurdly high prices and high surpluses is a British consideration, a European consideration and, if I may say so, a world consideration, because it leads to the dumping at absurd prices of foodstuffs in the rest of the world in a way that prevents proper development of the developing countries.

Mr. Watt: At the next meeting of the Council, will the right hon. Gentleman discuss the ludicrous situation whereby live cattle are exported from this country to Germany and are slaughtered there, to the benefit of the German worker and the German abattoir trade, after which the meat is then reimported into Britain, collecting huge MCAs as it comes?

Mr. Silkin: This is one of the difficulties that arise in a MCA policy. I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman is making, but I must take into account all the other implications, and it is for that reason that in an earlier answer I said that on every occasion I must consider the national interest.

Potato Marketing Board

Mr. Spence: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what plans he has to meet the chairman of the Potato Marketing Board.

Mr. Bishop: My right hon. Friend has no specific plans for a meeting at present, but officials of my Department are frequently in touch with the chairman


and officials of the Potato Marketing Board.

Mr. Spence: In view of that reply, will the Minister take the earliest opportunity to settle the support prices for ware potatoes for this coming season? Will he confirm that he realises how urgent it is for growers to have the price structure before them before they put their valuable work and labour into their crop?

Mr. Bishop: I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's concern about the urgency of knowing where we stand in the future, but I think he will accept that it is a little too early to talk about what form of support will operate for the 1979 crop. We have been working to get some ideas from the Community about the future of the potato regime. That is one factor. We also need to know the ruling of the European Court on the import ban.

Mr. Corbett: Can my right hon. Friend encourage the Potato Marketing Board to do what it can to assist with the better marketing and grading of ware potatoes at all levels in order to help our own growers? Is he able to confirm that this aspect will be covered by the committee of inquiry into marketing, which his right hon. Friend announced in the White Paper"Farming and the Nation "?

Mr. Bishop: I take note of my hon. Friend's concern, and I shall bear in mind his views about the marketing side.

Mr. Welsh: Will the right hon. Gentleman arrange a meeting between British Rail and the Potato Marketing Board, to secure a better service for the potato industry? Is he aware of the present massive shortage of wagons in Scotland to meet the peak needs of the seed potato trade with England, which is causing great problems for the merchants? Will he take action to secure a better British Rail service for the potato industry?

Mr. Bishop: I take note of the hon. Gentleman's comments about the transport of potatoes. As for the organisation of the Scottish seed producers, the interests concerned have been examining the possibility of forming a body to improve the marketing of Scottish seed potatoes. I understand that there has been no decision from the industry about the form that such an organisation should take. Of course, we shall be interested

to see the proposals in due course. No doubt the aspects that the hon. Gentleman has raised will be relevant.

Dairy Trade Federation

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what plans he now has to meet the president of the Dairy Trade Federation.

Mr. John Silkin: I frequently meet the president of the Dairy Trade Federation, but I have no specific plans for a meeting at present.

Mr. Winterton:: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that reply. Is he aware that the financial position facing the dairy industry is becoming very grave indeed, and that even with a 15 per cent. revaluation, as it were, of the green pound it would require an additional penny a pint in the autumn to restore the margins of the dairy farmers? Will he bear this in mind when he makes his price review announcements? Will he now firmly tell the House that under no circumstances will the Government accept the co-responsibility levy proposals as at present put forward by the EEC?

Mr. Silkin: Perhaps I might deal with the second point first, because it has arisen before. I do not believe that the co-responsibility levy is right, for a number of reasons. I believe that it is discriminatory, against the United Kingdom in particular, but against efficient farmers throughout the Community anyway. In my view it is a reward for inefficiency and a penalty for efficiency. Secondly, if one is to attack the price level, as I believe one should, this is a bad way of doing so. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept that I have given a clear reply to his question.
As to the profitability of the dairy industry, the dairy herd has increased by about 53,000 in the last 12 months, calves are selling at a record price level, the feeding situation is very good and the present productivity rate is better than it was last year—and that was the best for several years. Of course, I shall look at matters as they arise.

Mr. Gould: Will my right hon. Friend point out to the Dairy Trade Federation, in case it is in any doubt on the matter, that New Zealand is willing, able and,


indeed, desperately anxious to retain access to this market for her butter and cheese and would wish to be able to supply us with those products at prices that are approximately half the level of Common Market prices?

Mr. Silkin: This is one of the areas of dispute that I must confess I have with the Dairy Trade Federation. I believe that the importation of New Zealand butter and cheese into the United Kingdom is right, for every possible reason.

Bovine Tuberculosis (Badgers)

Mr. Watkinson: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a further statement on the problems of bovine tuberculosis and the slaughter of badgers in the South-West.

Mr. Strang: During 1978 bovine tuberculosis was found in the South-West region in 65 herds of cattle and in 55 badger carcases. Both figures represent a welcome reduction on previous years.

Mr. Watkinson: Does my hon. Friend accept that thousands of badgers are being gassed in the South-West region? Does he agree that, while cattle can thus be protected, we should not indulge in widespread gassing of badgers when we are not sure of the scientific link? Is he prepared to accept the view that we should adopt a trapping policy, so that we could gain more scientific knowledge about the cause of this disease rather than a policy of gassing, which presents no long-term solution?

Mr. Strang: I do not think that I can go all the way with my hon. Friend's comments. The trouble is that although there is a test for tuberculosis in live cattle, there is no such test for live badgers. I do not think that trapping is a practical solution. However, if there is any satisfactory alternative to gassing, we shall always be happy to look at it.

Mr. Kershaw: Is the Minister aware that many people outside the Ministry still do not accept that there is a real nexus between TB in cattle and TB in badgers? Can he unequivocally assure the House that he is satisfied that this nexus exists?

Mr. Strang: I am not sure to which people the hon. Gentleman is referring. The consultative panel which advises the

Government on these matters met only a fortnight ago. It includes representatives of the main welfare organisations, including the RSPCA. and they are happy with the Government's progress.

National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers

Mr. Bulmer: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he has any plans to meet the general secretary of the National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers.

Mr. John Silkin: I meet the general secretary frequently, but I have no specific plans for a meeting at present.

Mr. Bulmer: Since the Government have made it clear that they are against any general increase in farm prices, and since the majority of farmers may expect a continuing erosion of their returns, does the right hon. Gentleman accept that at the present time farming confidence is not good? Will he therefore meet the agriculture workers' union and, indeed, colleagues in his own party to discuss the wisdom of pressing for such measures as the rating of agriculture land, a wealth tax and even the nationalisation of land, which can only further undermine farmers' confidence, and with it job prospects in the industry?

Mr. Silkin: I know that farmers' confidence is a fragile thing, but the reality is very different from what the hon. Gentleman is implying. This has been a record period for British farming. We intend to see that it continues to be so.

Mr. Dykes: Will the Minister meet the general secretary as soon as possible, to keep everything in perspective? He will have support for dealing with agricultural surpluses in the CAP, but he should remind the general secretary, as soon as possible, that although food prices have doubled in the last four years under the Labour Government, only 10 per cent. of that has been directly due to the CAP. That has been publicly admitted by Labour Ministers.

Mr. Silkin: I think that the general secretary would be interested were I to put that point of view to him. But he might also put to me the point that we


were talking about the usual and most expensive forms of food.

Mr. Heffer: Will my right hon. Friend draw the attention of the Opposition to the fact that at one stage after the war, following Tom Williams, we had a fine system of support but it was destroyed? If we were sensible, we would get back to that system. It would enable farm workers to get a decent wage and farmers a good return.

Mr. Silkin: I do not accept that the farming industry, as at present constituted, cannot afford to pay a decent wage to farm workers. I have said before, and repeat to the House now that the trouble is that the workers are employed in a dispersed industry. There is no doubt that good farm gate negotiation should result in a decent wage for farm workers.

Mr. Jopling: Will the Minister acknowledge, in response to the suggestion by his hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer), that a return to the old system of support would probably cost the taxpayers of this country around an extra £1,000 million a year?

Mr. Silkin: That, of course, would be on the basis that we were still paying for the disposal, storage and export of goods in surplus. To put the matter into total perspective, the farm budget at present runs at £6½ billion a year. Of that £6—billion, 75 per cent. is spent either on export restitutions, storage or disposal.

Veal

Miss Fookes: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will commission research into methods of veal production with the objective of funding a method both economic and humane.

Mr. Strang: Current research commissioned by my Department into methods of calf rearing take into account animal welfare.

Miss Fookes: Does the Minister appreciate that many people, including myself, find veal production so distasteful that they will not eat veal? Will he therefore take more active measures to try and produce methods that are humane?

Mr. Strang:: A lot of the research that we are carrying out is relevant. I accept

that not only the hon. Lady but many hon. Members on both sides of the House are very concerned about animal welfare generally. I cannot accept that all veal production is necessarily cruel.

Mr. Arthur Latham: Will my hon. Friend, on reflection, acknowledge that, by its nature, there cannot be a genuinely humane form of veal production? Does he see a connection between veal and the seal? Is he aware that early-day motions have been tabled by the hon. Lady and myself on the subject? Does he agree that those who support us might also draw the line at veal production?

Mr. Strang: I cannot accept entirely what my hon. Friend said. We have a code of animal welfare for cattle production. We are most anxious that the State veterinary service should keep a close watch on all veal production in this country and take the necessary steps if any cruelty is involved.

European Community (Price Review)

Mr. Marten: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on the EEC price review.

Mr. John Silkin: My central objective in this year's CAP price negotiations is a freeze on common prices to reduce surpluses and cut the cost of the CAP to the consumer and the taxpayer.

Mr. Marten: In view of the slight feeling of some hon. Members on this side of the House that the Labour Party is trying to say that the Conservative Party is not backing up the Government when they stand up to the EEC, does the Minister find it useful that he can say to his Community co-Ministers that the Conservative Party supports him on the price freeze and that if he departs from that approach he might have great trouble and be unable to get the matter through the House of Commons?

Mr. Silkin: When I go to Brussels I always quote the hon. Gentleman in firm evidence and alliance on this matter.

Mr. Jay: Is my right hon. Friend aware that his policy has the support of the whole country, except the Opposition Front Bench?

Mr. Silkin: Even the Opposition Front Bench sometimes falls into line.

Mr. Peyton: Will the right hon. Gentleman keep in mind the fact that his right hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay) is as inaccurate in what he has just said as he is on many other matters?

Mr. Silkin: I do not think that my right hon. Friend is all that inaccurate. I took the precaution of reading the debates that took place in the price fixing in 1977. I recommend the right hon. Gentleman to read them again.

Oral Answers to Questions — TUC

Mr. Dykes: asked the Prime Minister what plans he has to hold a meeting with the Trades Union Congress.

The Prime Minister (Mr. JamesCallaghan): I meet representatives of the TUC from time to time at the National Economic Development Council and on other occasions. Further meetings will be arranged as necessary.

Mr. Dykes: Since the Prime Minister will undoubtedly be discussing rising prices with the TUC again soon, does he still stand by his solemn statement made on ITV on 20 July 1978 that
 I guarantee that prices and inflation will not go back into double figures in the course of 1979 "?

The Prime Minister: I think that that statement must be amended in the light of what has taken place since that date. The policy that the Government announced at that time would undoubtedly have reduced inflation, but a number of factors intervened, including the vote of the Opposition before Christmas, which removed any sanctions from the hands of the Government in these matters. They lit the fuse. They must stand the results of some of the consequences.

Mr. Molloy: When my right hon. Friend meets the TUC, will he make clear how the Leader of the Opposition disapproved of his endeavours to defend the British people, especially on prices? If, by some tragedy, she came to power, recent industrial skirmishes would appear trivial. The attitude of the Leader of the Opposition on issues that affect ordinary

working people would cause the most serious crisis this country has ever faced.

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir. I can understand my hon. Friend's concern about these matters, although I was glad to see that the hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. Nott), who does not appear to be here this afternoon, made a similar statement. It repeated, in perhaps even more vicious language than mine, what I said at the European Council. I understand that the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath) has been on the air today expressing his view. I do not envy the right hon. Lady the Leader of the Opposition the task of trying to put those views together.

Mrs. Thatcher: I can cope.

The Prime Minister: I am glad to hear that. I suppose it means that we shall get a retraction from the hon. Member for St. Ives just as we have had a retraction on shipbuilding from the hon. Member for Surrey, North-West (Mr. Grylls).

Mr. David Steel: When the Prime Minister next meets the TUC, will he indicate that the 10·1 per cent. figure of inflation forecast by the Price Commission must serve as a terrible warning to the movement? If a voluntary incomes policy cannot be achieved, any Government of this country must retain the right to introduce an effective and enforceable incomes policy.

The Prime Minister: As the right hon. Gentleman said, this is a forecast. We shall see tomorrow the actual rate of increase, when the retail price index is published. Although this forecast has frequently turned out to be accurate, we had better see the actual position when the index is published. As to the future, the right hon. Gentleman knows that I need no convincing about the seriousness of a rising inflation rate both on growth and on employment prospects. I am glad to say that as a result of the most recent discussions between the TUC and ourselves there is an agreement to work out policies that would reduce the rate of inflation to 5 per cent. or below within three years. That, I think, the country as a whole must stick by.

Mr. Kinnock: In my right hon. Friend's reply to the right hon. Lady the Leader of the Opposition, was he not


rather unsympathetic, especially now that she appears to be the last pro-Marketeer in Britain? Is not this disturbance manifested by her use of the word"abrasiveness "? For the right hon. Lady to protest a dislike of abrasiveness is rather like Count Dracula professing a distaste for blood. Will my right hon. Friend give an undertaking to increase his abrasiveness until he rubs out altogether the common agricultural policy?

The Prime Minister: If it is language that is objectionable, I am prepared to rely upon the hon. Member for St. Ives, an Opposition spokesman, who said:
 to oppose this situation vigorously is not anti-European or carping at the edges, it is a necessary protest.
I assume that if it is not"carping at the edges"it is hardly abrasive to say so. The right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath) must not allow his nostalgia for the past to overcome the facts of the present.

Oral Answers to Questions — PRIME MINISTER (ENGAGEMENTS)

Mr. Temple-Morris: asked the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 15 March.

The Prime Minister: This morning I presided at a meeting of the Cabinet. In addition to my duties in this House I shall be holding further meetings with ministerial colleagues and others.

Mr. Temple-Morris: Will the Prime Minister take time today to consider the importance of trying to continue a reasonably bipartisan policy on Rhodesia between the various parts of the House? Does he agree that the best way to do that is to give a lead to the House by sending to Rhodesia an all-party delegation of hon. Members who are respected by the House and the nation? That should be a delegation of Parliament rather than of Government. Is he aware that there is a good precedent for that and that many Opposition Members—I hope hon. Members on both sides of the House—request and require him to give a lead?

The Prime Minister: I know that the hon. Gentleman approaches this difficult problem with a view to trying to find a solution that is consistent with our honour

as a country and with securing peace and justice in Rhodesia, or Zimbabwe. I have considered seriously with my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary the sending of a parliamentary delegation. 
I must point out to the hon. Gentleman that the United States Congress is not sending a congressional delegation. It is sending observers from outside Congress. I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the House who are able to go to Rhodesia will make a visit during the elections. The Government will be ready to facilitate such a visit. However, I could not recommend the House to make it an official visit. If the House were to do so, the impact of the visit in the rest of Africa would be totally misunderstood. As it is clear that the elections will solve nothing, I regret to say, the best solution is that they should lead in due course to internationally supervised elections in which the whole of the people take part, including those now fighting outside Rhodesia.

Mr. George Cunningham: In view of the ill-founded criticisms of the Prime Minister levelled today by the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath) about European agriculture, will my right hon. Friend find time to read, and preferably get an actual tape of the speech made yesterday morning by Mr. Gundelach in the European Parliament, when he strongly attacked the present operation of the agricultural policy, in terms that are perfectly comparable with anything that the Prime Minister has said?

The Prime Minister: I shall be glad to read that speech. I had noted that Mr. Gundelach had made such a speech and that support is also coming from Germany for that view. I do not think that the majority, including those who say that I used abrasive language, have really read what I said. I shall be happy to put a copy of my comments in the Library. I wrote out the text carefully beforehand. If it is put in the Library and is read, perhaps we shall have more accurate comments on the language, the tone, the nature of it, the logic of it and the forceful and overwhelming persuasion that it carries.

Mrs. Thatcher: rose—

Mr. Kinnock: The tin goddess.

Mrs. Thatcher: Will the Prime Minister confirm or deny a report which I understand is on the Tape that, as a result of the Cabinet meeting this morning, a decision has been taken to lay the orders consequent upon the referendums a fortnight ago? Will he say when he intends to give time for the House to vote on those orders? Will that be before the end of the month?

The Prime Minister: I can confirm that after the Cabinet meeting I authorised a statement that the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Secretary of State for Wales would lay orders for the repeal of the two Acts next week. At the same time a statement will be made. I ask the right hon. Lady to await that statement.

Mr. Radice: Has my right hon. Friend noticed the similarities between the economic and industrial policies of the right hon. Lady the Leader of the Opposition and those of M. Barre in France that are causing such social unrest? Does he agree that the confrontation that occurred under the Conservative Administration would be disastrous if it were to recur?

The Prime Minister: I think that the economic policies that are being followed in Western democracies, including those that make up the Community, are leading to tensions. I do not exempt Britain from those tensions. We have had serious tensions during the winter. The major problem of how to overcome inflation, reinstate growth and reduce unemployment is something that faces us all.

Mr. George Gardiner: Further to the Prime Minister's reply to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, will he acknowledge that it was not his Government or the Opposition Front Bench that insisted on devolution referendums in the first place, but the House of Commons? Furthermore, will he acknowledge that it was not his Government nor the Opposition Front Bench that first insisted on a 40 per cent. safeguard, but the House of Commons? When will he fulfil his duty to the House and allow it to reach a conclusion on the matter, preferably before the end of the month?

The Prime Minister: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the information that he has conveyed. Perhaps he will

be kind enough to await the statement next week.

Miss Joan Lestor: Will my right hon. Friend try to find time today to meet his colleagues in the Foreign Office and the Department of Trade and infect them with his vigorous and abrasive persuasion in relation to the recent report on codes of practice for EEC firms in South Africa, which fall far short of anything recommended by the Labour Party and by statements of the British Government?

The Prime Minister: I shall have that matter investigated. I shall convey what my hon. Friend has said to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and ask him to get in touch with her.

Mr. Pattie: asked the Prime Minister if he will list his engagements for Thursday 15 March.

The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply which I have just given to the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Temple-Morris).

Mr. Pattie: In view of today's appalling figures for manufacturing production, which are the worst for a decade, how does the Prime Minister account for this latest failure in his industrial strategy?

The Prime Minister: January was a bad month. I do not know why Opposition hon. Members should laugh at the fact that it was a bad month for manufacturing production. We all live in the same country, do we not? There is no occasion for gloating because of the affairs of January. There was a combination of a substantial strike, as the hon. Gentleman knows, and pretty terrible weather. I expect to see a substantial recovery in the index during later months.

Mr. Donald Stewart: Bearing in mind that 30 years ago more than 2 million Scots voted in favour of some form of Scottish Government, that in October 1974 every political party in Scotland came out in favour of a Scottish Assembly and that there was a majority in favour of such an Assembly in the referendum, will the Prime Minister give instructions to lay the order today? In addition, may we have a firm date next week for a debate?

The Prime Minister: I note what the right hon. Gentleman says. As I requested, we have had a period of reflection, and now we must proceed to a period of discussion.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mrs. Thatcher: May I ask the Lord President of the Council to state the business for next week?

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Michael Foot): The business for next week will be as follows:

MONDAY 19 MARCH—Debate on a motion to take note of the Government's expenditure plans, 1979–80 to 1982–83, Cmnd 7439.

Consideration of Lords amendments to the Social Security Bill.

TUESDAY 20 MARCH—Proceedings on the Administration of Justice (Emergency Provisions) (Scotland) Bill.

Motion on EEC documents R/2712/78,R/2311/78 and R/2163/78 on the Communities' energy policy.

WEDNESDAY 21 MARCH—Debate on the report of the Shackleton committee, Cmnd 7324.

Motion on the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1976 (Continuance) Order.

Motion on the temporary short-time working compensation scheme.

THURSDAY 22 MARCH—Second Reading of the Road Traffic (Seat Belts) Bill.

Motion relating to the Firearms (Variation of Fees) Order.

FRIDAY 23 MARCH—Private Members' motions.

MONDAY 26 MARCH—Debate on a motion on the statement of the Defence Estimates, Cmnd 7474, which will be concluded on Tuesday 27 March.

Mrs. Thatcher: May I put three points to the Lord President? First, will he say when the statement to which the Prime Minister has just referred may be expected, or is that still under discussion? Secondly, may we have a statement on the effect of the selective Civil Service strikes? Many hon. Members are receiving complaints from constituents that they are not able to get VAT refunds, that they are not able to get at their savings, and they are not able to get interest payments. It is causing distress in many of our constituencies. May we have a statement on that, as the Prime Minister said that con-

tangency plans had been made? Thirdly, when may we have a foreign affairs debate?

Mr. Foot: To take the matters in reverse order, I shall consider the right hon. Lady's request for a debate on foreign affairs. I cannot give a commitment without looking at the other business ahead. Secondly, I shall certainly see whether we can have a statement next week on the selective Civil Service strikes. On the right hon. Lady's first point, although I cannot give a definite day for the statement, it will be one day next week.

Mr. Flannery: There have been many worrying developments in Northern Ireland recently. Will my right hon. Friend consider an early debate to clear our minds on what is happening? There is a great demand for such a debate on the Labour Benches.

Mr. Foot: A statement will be made to the House at the beginning of business tomorrow by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland on the Bennett report and other matters that have been raised.

Mr. Beith: When will we have a statement on the Bingham report? Is it not intolerable that the decision of the House to inquire into these matters should continue to be obstructed by an unelected House?

Mr. Foot: I quite agree. It is most unfortunate that the unelected House should have taken the step it did to prevent the decision of this House coming into effect. As I said a week ago, I am having discussions with Members in different parts of the House to see how we may bring forward a further motion. I replied last week to a question on that by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hughes), and I am still proceeding with it.

Mr. Hooley: Further to that, it will not have escaped my right hon. Friend's notice that the air force of the illegal regime is committing indiscriminate murder in Angola, Mozambique and Zambia. Will the Government make a statement on our attitude to sanctions that may be necessary against South Africa to prevent the essential flow of oil to Mr. Smith's air force?

Mr. Foot: That is a different issue from the one raised before, but it is none the less extremely important. I shall discuss such a statement with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, but I make no commitment about a statement.

Mr. Michael Latham: Will the Prime Minister's period of discussion on the Scotland and Wales repeal orders be such as to reach a decision before Easter, or is it intended to kick the ball into touch for as long as possible?

Mr. Foot: I do not know where the hon. Member gets his metaphors from, but we should await the statement and then the House can express its views, which is the normal way to proceed.

Mr. Welsh: Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that this tiny step does not affect the real issue at stake? May we have a date for the vote? Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that if a statement is not forthcoming before next week's Business Statement the SNP will table a motion of no confidence?

Mr. Foot: Due weight has to be given to these representations.

Mr. Torney: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the EEC has recently destroyed or fed to cattle millions of metric tons of apples and cauliflowers? Exorbitant prices are being charged in our shops for these commodities. The CAP is totally inadequate for Britain. Will my right hon. Friend therefore arrange for an early debate on the matter?

Mr. Foot: There will be occasions for the House to discuss the specific matter raised by my hon. Friend, but the House has recently had many opportunities to express its general view on the subject.

Mr. Higgins: In view of the widespread concern at the Inland Revenue's scandalously unfair decision to negotiate a tax amnesty with trade unions in Fleet Street, may we have a debate at the earliest opportunity? Is the Leader of the House aware that the answers to parliamentary questions imply that Ministers do not consider that they are responsible for that decision? May we debate that as well?

Mr. Foot: Whether we should have a debate is another matter, but the Inland

Revenue is acting within the laws passed by this House.

Mr. Fitt: With the publication of the Bennett report tomorrow morning and the statement that is to be made in the House by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, is the Leader of the House aware of the considerable controversy surrounding the report? May we have a full-scale and unrestricted debate on every aspect of the Bennett report at the earliest opportunity? Will my right hon. Friend also ensure that the leak on the Bennett report that is about to take place to British journalists will also occur tonight in Northern Ireland?

Mr. Foot: I do not arrange the leaks, so I cannot respond to that, but I note what my hon. Friend says. Much the best course is for the House to listen to tomorrow's statement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and then see how we shall proceed.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Is the Lord President interested in the unemployment levels? If so, will he arrange for the Secretary of State for Trade to tell the House what is the Government's view on the concessions made to the United States at the Tokyo round of GATT? As the concessions granted, and those proposed by the EEC, will undoubtedly affect seriously the long-term prospects for textiles, paper and board in this country, will he make a statement on the unemployment that is bound to result?

Mr. Foot: The Government are always concerned about the levels of unemployment. I shall see whether it is the best course for a statement to be made on these matters.

Mr. Faulds: May I pursue the urgency of pursuing the matters raised in the Bingham report, particularly in view of the renegade attitude displayed by the ex-Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Huyton (Sir H. Wilson), in the quite disgraceful programme on Southern Rhodesia two nights ago?

Mr. Foot: I cannot comment on any programme. I have already referred to what I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hughes). We are concerned to see whether we can bring this matter back to the House of


Commons, which is the proper place to decide it. However, we must have some discussions before that can occur.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: Is it not an absurd sense of priorities for the Leader of the House to pursue the dead question of the Bingham report but at the same time to ignore his duty to lay an order before the House on the question of the repeal of the devolution Acts? In the light of the Prime Minister's statement, will the Leader of the House give an undertaking that as soon as that order is laid he will revise the business for next week so that the House can come to a decision?

Mr. Foot: It will be much wiser for the hon. Member to await the statement. Then we can decide how we should proceed. As for criticising the Government's sense of priorities, I should point out that the first item on Monday's business is that which was asked for by the Opposition. I was expecting a vote of thanks from the Opposition, not these testy criticisms.

Mr. Arthur Latham: Will the Government respond to early-day motions Nos. 321
[That this House deplores the intended imminent killing of nearly 200,000 seals in Newfoundland; notes that this is for solely commercial purposes; is sickened that hunters will put these animals to death by smashing their heads in with clubs and may even skin some baby seals alive; and asks Her Majesty's Government to make representations to the Canadian Government to stop this cruel massacre and itself to announce a ban on the import of seal products into the United Kingdom]
end 305?
[That this House, accepting the views of the RSPCA that the suffering caused to baby seals by clubbing to death is quite unacceptable, applauds Great Britain for its ban on clubbing; and calls upon Her Majesty's Government to give a further lead to the world by imposing a ban on the importation of seal products]
Will my right hon. Friend seriously consider tabling a motion next week with a view to appointing a Select Committee on retirement and leisure, to consider not merely problems and opportunities of pensioners but the difficulties facing all

people who have more spare time? Working people should be given the opportunity to pursue education, culture and recreation in a way that has not been possible in the past.

Mr. Foot: I shall consider my hon. Friend's second point. I have no comment to make about it now. I have seen early-day motion No. 321 and I acknowledge that it has wide support in the House and that there is obviously strong feeling about it. There will be a debate in the House next Friday on some aspects of these matters, and some of these questions can be raised then.

Mr. Fairbairn: In view of the volcanic threats made by the hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. Welsh), does the Lord President know the ancient Scottish adage,"Montes Scotici parturunt, ridiculus mus tartanicus nascitur "? In view of the fact that the policy of consensus, which the Prime Minister introduced this country to in 1977, has resulted in responsible officers of the courts going on strike in order to bully other people to obtain things for themselves, may we have a debate on the present state of industrial relations that the Government have brought upon us?

Mr. Foot: I am not quite sure whether the hon. and learned Member's Scots is as good as his Latin. I would prefer to listen to him on the one rather than the other. We had a debate in the House on industrial relations and the Government gave a view from the Front Bench. I have already read out some of next week's business that will touch on this subject. Once again, I would have expected a vote of thanks, even from the hon. and learned Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Mr. Fairbairn).

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: Is the Leader of the House aware that the Secretary of State for the Environment has refused to intervene to prevent the London Pavilion from being disembowelled and used for non-entertainment purposes? Will he ask the Secretary of State to justify to the House his inaction in this matter?

Mr. Foot: I did not know any of these facts before my hon. Friend raised them. I dare say that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has many other matters to engage him as well. However, I shall look at this question.

Mrs. Bain: In view of the welcome announcement of the Government's intention to extend the home credit scheme for United Kingdom ship owners for major conversions, when can we expect this legislation to be published and could its publication be coupled with an early date on the shipbuilding industry and the corporate plan?

Mr. Foot: I am glad to have the welcome that the hon. Lady gives to the announcement which will help both Scotland and Northern Ireland. I cannot give a date yet. I fully acknowledge the other matter that she has raised, but this is an extremely important question affecting the livelihood of many thousands of people in Scotland and elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Therefore we are entitled to take a little time in order to reach the best solution in difficult circumstances.

Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: Does the Leader of the House appreciate that until he gives us a chance to decide in detail upon the recommendations of the Pro cedure Committee he cannot redeem the pledge that he gave to the House that we could look more satisfactorily at the way in which we deal with EEC legislation?

Mr. Foot: I am well aware of my obligations to the House and of the different views that are held on some of the matters under consideration. I accept that we must proceed on these matters. The Procedure Committee has indicated its wish to proceed quickly as well.

Mr. Canavan: When the question of next week's statement on the Scotland Act was discussed, reference was made to a possible free vote on the order. Why-should there be a free vote on something that was a specific commitment in the Labour Party manifesto and was endorsed by an absolute majority of those who turned out for the referendum?

Mr. Foot: I must ask my hon. Friend and the rest of the House to await the statement next week.

Mr. Biffen: Is it the intention of the Leader of the House to arrange a debate on the interim report of the committee on the functions of financial institutions headed by the right hon. Member for Huyton (Sir H. Wilson) on the financing of small firms? That report was published this afternoon.

Mr. Foot: I have not had time to consider whether this should be debated next week. Of course the Government would want to give their views in such a debate. I cannot promise an early debate, but obviously at some stage the House will wish to discuss this matter.

Mr. Kinnock: In view of the great importance attached to the repeal of the Scotland Act and the Wales Act, will my right hon. Friend give an absolute, solemn and irreversible undertaking that the matter will be debated weeks before October 1979?

Mr. Foot: I am sure that my hon. Friend put that question in the same amiable spirit as he occasionally adopts. I accept it in that spirit.

Mr. William Clark: If the Leader of the House cannot promise a debate on the tax amnesty for certain casual workers in Fleet Street, will he persuade the Chancellor to make a statement to the House? Is it not totally unfair that one section of taxpayers should be given an amnesty while other sections are not? Does he agree that there is no precedent for this amnesty?

Mr. Foot: I am not prepared to discuss the merits or demerits of the matter. It would be absurd for me to attempt to answer questions like this at such a time. I shall consider the request for a statement. All that I have said before is that the Inland Revenue is carrying out the law of the land, and that must be taken into account.

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles: In view of the silent and dignified vigil by the nurses outside Parliament, should not we pay heed and have an early debate, so that we can be assured that the nurses will not be less well treated than the more loud-mouthed sections of society?

Mr. Foot: There will be a debate on the subject this evening, in which hon. Members may join. I agree with what the hon. and gallant Gentleman said about the dignified way in which the nurses put their case. I assure him that the Government are well aware of the strength of their case.

Mr. Raison: Why is the House not to be asked to approve the public expenditure White Paper? Is the Lord President afraid to put the matter to a vote?

Mr. Foot: The Government will put down a motion on the Order Paper and the Opposition will also have the opportunity, if they wish, to put down a motion. I hope that it will be superfluous. The hon. Gentleman may have the chance of voting on the words actually put forward by the right hon. Lady. I should have thought that that would satisfy him. I think that it is a little churlish to criticise. The right hon. Lady pressed strongly for this debate. I have taken her representations fully into account. The debate will take place at the beginning of next week. That should bring forth universal acclaim.

Mr. Tebbit: Will the Lord President arrange for the statements on the great Fleet Street tax fiddle and the Civil Service strike to be delivered on the same day? People will then be more easily able to see how the Government pay off one group of trade unionists by allowing them to fiddle their tax and allow another group of trade unionists to lock up people's savings—savings that have been entrusted to the Government—so that those affected must borrow from the banks at exorbitant rates of interest to make ends meet.

Mr. Foot: The compressing into one single question of the points put by the hon. Gentleman is a gross abuse of the way in which these matters should be presented to the House. I hope, therefore, that the House and the country will follow the customary rule of never believing anything the hon. Gentleman says unless it can be checked at a reputable source.

Mr. Aitken: On the matter of the tax amnesty, is the Lord President aware that

the Government cannot disclaim all responsibility for an unprecedented privilege being extended to a group of workers in Fleet Street? Surely it is right that if the traditional standards of impartiality of the Inland Revenue have been changed in favour of extending special privileges to groups of trade unionists, the House should debate the matter as soon as possible.

Mr. Foot: There are many other implications about the Inland Revenue's conduct that enter into these matters. I am not prepared to discuss the merits or demerits of the matter by way of business questions. I say neither more nor less.

BILL PRESENTED

ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE (EMERGENCY PROVISIONS) (SCOTLAND)

Mr. Secretary Millan, supported by the Lord Advocate and Mr. Harry Ewing, presented a Bill to provide for emergency arrangements for the administration of justice in Scotland; to suspend in part the operation of Section 17 of the Stamp Act 1891; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 109.]

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,

That, notwithstanding the practice of the House relating to the interval between the various stages of Bills of aids and supplies, more than one stage of the Consolidated Fund (No. 2) Bill may be proceeded with at this day's sitting.—[Mr. James Hamilton.]

CONSOLIDATED FUND (No. 2) BILL

Order for Second Reading read

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE

3.55 p.m.

Mr. William Hamilton: I am glad that we have this opportunity so early in the proceedings to have a debate on the state of the National Health Service. I wish to make particular reference to the question of nurses' pay.
It is interesting to note that the hon. and gallant Member for Winchester (Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles), who raised the matter a few minutes ago and complained that we were not to have an opportunity of debating it, has now left. However he may well return. I hope that he takes the opportunity of saying exactly what he and his party will do on this matter.
I take the view that, whatever may be the outcome of current negotiations the basic problem of nurses' pay will remain. We get the services of our nurses on the cheap. I have a deep personal conviction that the nursing profession, above all others—excluding neither the police, the firemen nor the Armed Forces—has been over generations at once the most dedicated and the most exploited profession in our society. Indeed, precisely because of nurses' dedication, Governments of all political persuasions have taken the nurses for granted.
In these troubled industrial times when militancy, bloody-mindedness and sheer bargaining muscle seem to count for more than anything else, the nursing profession, unwilling to be bloody-minded or to strike, shrinks from using whatever industrial muscle it has and relies heavily, indeed almost entirely, on persuading public opinion, the House and the Government of the justice of its cause.
I turn directly to the case. Hon. Members may have seen on television a week or two ago a programme in which appeared the headmaster of a large comprehensive

school, a miner, a dustman and a nurse. Figures of weekly wages were put up on the screen. Those involved were cross-examined by an independent tribunal in much the same way as the comparability Commission is to run affairs, we hope, in the near future. According to the programme, the headmaster received £185 a week, the miner £110 a week, the dustman about £70 a week and the nurse £58 a week. Those were gross figures.
The participants were afforded an opportunity, as they were cross-examined, of presenting their cases for increases in emoluments. After those cross-examinations the panel awarded relatively small increases to the headmaster, the miner and the dustman, and a substantial increase, from £58 to £81, to the nurse.
There is a moral to be drawn from that programme. The teachers, the miners and the dustmen may, and do, strike. They are men who belong to powerful trade unions. The nurse in the programme is a young woman. In spite of our equal pay legislation and the law on sexual equality, we still as a nation instinctively assume that female labour should be cheap—or cheaper than male labour.
Some time ago the police force created a great deal of noise. It badgered, indeed almost bullied, Ministers and Parliament. The policemen were helped by their paid hacks in the House, and inevitably by the Tory Opposition. The result was that substantial wage increases were awarded. They were probably merited. In fact, they resulted from an independent inquiry.
The independent inquiry into the nursing profession in 1974 resulted in the Halsbury report. As a result, the nurses were virtually taken off the breadline, I am glad to say, by the Labour Government—inevitably so. What has happened since then? A survey of male nurses took place in 1977. Most male nurses were working in nineteenth-century, dilapidated mental hospitals. I sometimes wonder how we persuaded men to work in those hospitals. That survey of male nurses showed that one in five was getting less than £50 a week. Only one in every 10 of the teachers, post office clerks and prison officers covered in that same survey was on that kind of figure. Indeed, even within the mainly female professions, nurses still suffered in comparison with the rest.
The average nurse in 1977 was earning £52 a week, compared with social workers on £60 a week and primary school teachers on £78 a week. Why should that be so? Why should these relativities be so arranged? Why should this House of Commons, why should public opinion, why should the Government, allow that state of affairs to be tolerated? Who dares assert that a three-year-trained nurse is worth £26 a week less than a primary school teacher, or £8 a week less than a social worker? There is absolutely no reason or justice in that.
We have all, I suppose, been in hospital at one time or another. A good nurse can literally mean the difference between life and death. The Halsbury report noted how the role of the nurse has become progressively more responsible, using procedures and treatments which not many years ago were reserved for doctors. This quotation from Halsbury should be framed and put on the desk of the Secretary of State for Social Services:
 We regard it as essential that the vocational nature of the job should not lead to undervaluation in financial terms.
Yet that is precisely what has happened over generations, and not only over the last few years.
I cannot resist putting on record some more odious but telling comparisons, showing not only what is wrong in relation to the nursing profession but also what is wrong with our society as a whole. I start with the police. A ward sister at the moment starts on £3,324 a year, rising to £4,299. A provincial policeman, not a London policeman, starts at £3,600 a year—about £300 a year more than a ward sister gets. He goes up to £5,700, which is nearly £1,500 a year—£30 a week—more than a ward sister gets.
The London policeman is better off still. From 1 September this year the London policeman will start at £4,569—about £1,200 more than a fully trained ward sister gets. He goes up to £6,669—just about what a Member of Parliament gets—and in addition he has his house and the other usual perks, plus an amount for any increase that there might have been in inflation from September 1978 to September 1979.
A senior nursing officer, the highest grade in the nursing profession, gets a

maximum of £5,277—£8 a week less than the village"copper ". It is obscene. A police sergeant in the provinces will get £6,250 a year from 1 September 1979. No nursing personnel anywhere in the National Health Service can go beyond £5,500.
It was reported in the press last week that the right hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. du Cann), who is the chairman of the Tory 1922 Committee, the leader of the Tory Back Benchers, made £1,400,000 by shuffling bits of paper around in the City casino. No nurse, however well-trained, however senior, could earn any-think like that over a career of 50 years. Could our society be more unfair than that?

Mr. Julian Ridsdale: Surely it is not by creating envy between one person and another that we can solve our problems. Surely the hon. Gentleman should apply his mind to how the country can increase its gross national product, and to how the proper incentive can be given to enable more wealth to be produced so that the nurses may be paid more.

Mr. Hamilton: The hon. Gentleman can make his speech in his own way, and I will make my speech in my own way. I have every right to emphasise the inequalities, the injustices and the unfairnesses in our society today in regard to the distribution of wealth.
My party was created in order to challenge the distribution of wealth in our society, and that is what we are doing this afternoon. The debate goes much wider than the emoluments of nurses. It goes much wider than the future of the National Health Service. The National Health Service benefits more than anybody the people who, before it existed, suffered enormously because there was no such service. They are suffering now because we have not the resources to give us the kind of service that we want. As long as this goes on, no individual in this country can claim the right to £1,400,000 of our resources for doing damn all. That is the point I wish to make, and it is very relevant to the debate.
Now that I have been provoked, I will go further. There are other people, worthless individuals, right at the top of the tree in our institutions who have


been paid massive increases by my Government each year for doing not very much. Not one of those people is worth anything comparable to a nursing sister or a staff nurse in our hospitals. I hope that this message will get home to the Government, because the Government will be coming forward with proposals to give these annuitants massive increases in the next few months.

Mr. David Waddington: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Hamilton: No. I have quite a lot to say, and I shall offend a lot of people before I have finished. I am sorry. I shall get through this speech if it kills me.
I want to outline the present state of play. It is not generally recognised that the present claim of the nurses is part of the April 1978 pay negotiations. It is not well known, either, that the Secretary of State has been in possession of the relevant document since the late summer of 1978.
That April 1978 agreement was in three parts. First, there was to be a 10 per cent. increase for all staff. Secondly, there was to be a phased reduction of hours, from 40 to 37½, by 1981. Thirdly, there was to be the investigation of a payment in compensation for nurses having decided to forgo a productivity bonus scheme on professional and ethical grounds. Those words are not too often used in pay negotiations these days.
In a letter dated 8 May 1978 the Secretary of State told the Whitley Council that he would
 be very ready to consider 
such a claim for a compensatory payment. The current offer fails to recognise that the negotiations have been going on for nearly a year. It is no wonder that the nurses are so angry and impatient. The increases recommended by Lord Halsbury in 1974 placed the nurses three-quarters of the way up the pay scale for non-manual women workers. Between May 1974 and April 1978 the average pay for all nurses rose from £39·70 to £66·70 per week—an increase of 65 per cent. In the same period, the increase in wages of those above the nurses on that pay scale was almost 90 per cent.
The average earnings of registered and enrolled nurses in April 1974 was £54

per week. At that time, women primary teachers were earning £86 per week. In 1975, nurses earned £6 per week more than secretaries and shorthand typists—very noble and worthwhile workers. Today the nurses earn £4 a week less than shorthand typists. I have yet to see a shorthand typist who does a more worthwhile job than any nurse but that might be a matter of opinion.
The Manifesto Group of the Parliamentary Labour Party held a meeting last night to discuss these matters. I had intended to quote at length from the document that we agreed, but I shall not do so. In that document, we stated categorically that we do not accept that the present offer—9 per cent. plus £1—is adequate. We do not accept that the offer is enough for a section of the community which has forgone the right to strike. That should have been reflected in the offer. I charge the Government with a complete lack of imagination and generosity in dealing with this worthwhile section of our community. That is what is stated in our document. It is a very good document—I should know because I drew it up.
The nurses should not rely on the Prime Minister's answer to a Conservative Member last week. He said that the offer was generous. However, their present wage is already inadequate and the additional sums of £6 to £8 per week are inadequate, too. The sooner we solve the problem on a permanent basis, the better.
I warned my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland that I would refer to Scottish matters. The situation in Scotland is not as bad as it has been south of the border, but there are ominous signs that it is becoming worse. NUPE has much to answer for. It has lost a great deal of public support by its activities. [HON. MEMBERS:"Hear, hear ".] Before Opposition Members start crowing they should understand that the union represents low-paid workers—some of whom have been on starvation wages. No sympathy for those workers has come from Conservative Members. I believe that the Tory Party would have loved one or two nice juicy deaths in the Health Service if they could have been laid at the door of NUPE. It would have served their political purposes very well if one or two patients had died in the course of the industrial strikes.
However, NUPE does its case no good at all. Damage can be done to innocent people by this sort of irresponsible—but understandable—action and we should devise machinery to prevent a recurrence. The Manifesto Group statement says as much. We are glad that the Government are attempting an exercise in comparability and we hope that the nurses and the staff side will accept the machinery and that we can move forward from a proper base. But there is no excuse for using the machinery as a reason for trying to palm off the nurses with £1 plus 9 per cent. They deserve much more.
From time to time, hon. Members are faced with conflicting loyalties—to the country, the national interest, their constituencies, their parties and their own individual consciences. Taking all those matters into account, I should like to believe that all hon. Members try to do what they think is right. I have never been surer of anything than that I am right to fight for the nurses. I am sure the public is with the nurses and it behoves the Government to be more generous and imaginative than they have been in the past.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Before I call the Secretary of State, I should inform the House of the course that I propose to follow in the debate. I intend to call successively those who won places in the ballot and whose names have been put to this debate. That means that three Labour Members will be called first. That will be balanced when the debate is opened to those who were not successful in the ballot, when I shall call three Opposition Members. Thenceforward, the normal course will be followed.

4.17 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Social Services (Mr. David Ennals): I shall intervene briefly and shall not deal with the broader issues of the debate. My right hon. Friend the Minister of State will do that later.
I wish to speak about one issue only—the dispute with ancillary workers and ambulance men. That is not because I am not concerned with many other matters that hon. Members will raise and I am as concerned about the nurses as is my

hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton).
Three unions have voted to accept the offer made to NHS ancillary staff. I warmly welcome that. However, following on from what my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central said, I regret that NUPE has advised its members not only to continue industrial action in the Health Service but to intensify that action. A fair offer has been made and I repeat that there is no prospect of that offer being improved. Nothing will be gained by prolonging the dispute, but a great deal can be lost, by those taking the industrial action, their work mates, and, of course, the patients.
It is high time that the protracted and unnecessary dispute was settled. Yesterday I wrote to the chairmen of the Whitley Councils concerned, asking them to hold immediate meetings of their councils so that decisions may be reached. We are in the eighth week of industrial action in the Health Service. During that time, NHS authorities have acted with remarkable restraint in the face of provocation. It has been open to them to respond to those taking the disruptive action with stronger management measures. But they have generally refrained from doing so because they did not want to prejudice the chances of a settlement, first while the negotiations were in progress and then while the Government's offer was being considered by the union members.
However, during the past 48 hours severe industrial action has broken out in a number of areas, and no one can expect nurses, administrators and doctors to continue to struggle to keep services going while those who turn up for work but take disruptive action get paid fully for doing so. Last week I asked authorities to exercise caution during the period immediately following the declaration of the union votes so that nothing could affect the chances of the unions reaching agreement among themselves. But the situation has now changed somewhat and I have concluded that those NHS authorities which are facing serious industrial action should now, at their discretion, and in the light of local circumstances, respond to it with appropriate management measures.
A particularly serious feature of the action that has broken out this week is that it often consists of all-out strikes.


sometimes started without notice and aimed at essential services. This is in disregard of the union's own code of conduct.
If essential services can be maintained only with the help of volunteers, the answer is clear. So far, health authorities have been cautious about accepting offers of help from the public. I have explained to the House several times why I believe that they have been right to do so. They did not want to take action that might precipitate a decline in their relations with employees who were observing the code of conduct, and they were aware that the leaders of the volunteer movement were anxious to avoid conflict with the trade unions that could jeopardise the long-term usefulness of volunteers.
There can, however, be no question of union members disregarding their own code and seeking to prevent essential services from being provided while, at the same time, exercising an effective veto on the use of volunteers. While we are faced with action or threats of action which will prevent essential services from being provided in certain areas, it would be quite wrong to deny members of the public the right to give their services. I have told health authorities which are facing severe industrial action that they may now invite members of the public to work as volunteers in the NHS when that is the only way of keeping essential services going.
I deeply regret that the irresponsible threats and behaviour of a small proportion—and it is only a small proportion—of union members in the NHS makes it necessary for me to make this statement. I sincerely hope that the views of the responsible majority will prevail and that it will not be necessary to call upon the public for its help. If that happens, people should be guided by local publicity in the press and other media which will inform them how to respond. It is, as I have said many times, the task of managements to decide on these issues. If volunteers simply turn up at a hospital, they could make the job of hard-pressed managers that much more difficult.
I should also make clear that in large parts of the country serious industrial action is not occurring. In many areas,

particularly in the southern part of Britain, work in the NHS seems to be returning to normal. We must all hope that the irresponsible behaviour of a militant minority in other areas will soon come to an end and that the dispute can be brought to a conclusion.

Mr. Robert Hughes: My right hon. Friend has mentioned his response in England. Have parallel statements been issued by the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales about the NHS in those countries?

Mr. Ennals: Neither of those Secretaries of State has made a parallel statement, but my hon. Friend will have noted the important votes that took place in Edinburgh two or three days ago concerning industrial action there.

Mr. Robin Corbert: Will my right hon. Friend make clear whether he has discussed the bones of his statement with the voluntary agen cies which are vitally concerned about the use and relationship of volunteers in the NHS in the long term?

Mr. Ennals: Throughout the past few weeks I have kept in close touch with the volunteer centre and its officers and the voluntary organisations involved in the operation. They have respected the position that I have taken throughout the dispute.

Mr. Timothy Raison: It is true that action has, generally, been dying down recently, but can the right hon. Gentleman confirm that there have been signs, not only in Scotland, of an escalation today? Is it fair to say that his statement suggests to local authorities that if they take the view that if those who do only part of their job, rather than the whole job, continue to take that form of industrial action, it will be proper for authorities to send them home and not to pay them?

Mr. Ennals: On the first part of the question, I said in my statement that in a number of places—I shall not run through a list, though I could—there has been an intensification of action in the past 48 hours. I added that in many parts of the country there has been a de-escalation, which I find encouraging. The action that managements take is their responsibility and it would be wrong for


me to tell them how to deal with a local management problem. They have to take decisions in the light of what they know of local circumstances and the urgency of being able to sustain services.

4.26 p.m.

Mr. Patrick Jenkin: Like the Secretary of State, I had not intended to intervene in the debate. Like his intervention, mine will be brief, but his important statement calls for an immediate response from the Opposition. I preface it by welcoming the right hon. Gentleman back to the House. He is obviously not fully restored to health yet, and we hope that he soon will be. We are sorry about his recurrent illness.
The Secretary of State made an important statement about the response of management to the escalation of industrial action. My immediate reaction is to say what a pity it is that statement was not made earlier! The right hon. Gentleman cannot seek to pretend that the code of conduct drawn up by the unions at the beginning of the dispute has been observed until only recently. He must know, as we know, that time and again actions took place throughout the country in blatant breach of the code of conduct—even if that code was itself regarded as adequate to ensure emergency care in the NHS.
The intention of the code was to have regard to emergencies, but there have been many serious cases of patients suffering not just temporary but permanent harm from industrial action. The right hon. Gentleman will know of the fights that doctors and nurses have had to have in order to get urgently needed treatment for their patients carried out while industrial action has been taking place.
In our debate on 5 February, I took the right hon. Gentleman to task because in his circular at the beginning of the dispute he appeared to take out of the hands of management the sort of measured response that management have to take in the circumstances that they face. The right hon. Gentleman held to himself the question whether pay should be withheld from those taking industrial action or whether workers should be sent home rather than be allowed to sit about drawing full pay.
That circular did enormous damage, because it undermined the right, indeed the duty, of management to respond appropriately to indusrial action according to local circumstances.
The right hon. Gentleman referred to volunteers. None of my hon. Friends has ever argued that it can be for anyone other than management to decide whether volunteers should be called in. Hundreds of thousands of people were prepared to offer their help to keep going services to patients.
Of course it must be for management, for the authorities, to decide how and in what circumstances to call on the help of volunteers. I regret that there has been what I can only describe as a lamentable feebleness on the part of the Secretary of State in encouraging managements—where the code has been broken and emergency services manifestly nave not been kept going—to call on volunteers.
Mercifully, the Secretary of State has now recognised that that is not an appropriate response to the kind of action that we have been facing over recent months. He now recognises that both on the point of employees of the Health Service who are taking destructive action and on the question of calling in volunteers, we must have a firmer hand and firmer management. My hon. Friend the Member for Reading, South (Dr. Vaughan) will deal with other important issues, particularly the points about nurses' pay raised by the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton). All I can say at this stage is that at last the Secretary of State has recognised that he has to take this firmer action if we are to eradicate anarchy from the National Health Service and restore some kind of standard of care for patients.
It has been sad in the extreme to see what has been happening in our hospitals up and down the country over recent months. I have to say with regret that I believe the Secretary of State himself bears a very heavy burden of responsibility for the failure to deal with this more firmly and effectively months ago. We welcome his statement now but oh, it is far too late!

Mr. Ennals: I had almost sat down, until I heard the intervention, but I feel that I ought to comment on two or three of the points that have been made by the


right hon. Member for Wanstead and Woodford. He always takes me to task, and he always gets it wrong. He has today as on most of the exchanges, sought to be provocative and virtually has urged me to be provocative. I have refused to respond. If I may deal with the three points he has made—[Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Oscar Murton): I am sure that the House would agree that the right hon. Gentleman sought leave to speak again. Is that agreed? That is agreed.

Mr. Ennals: I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because, with the permission of the House, I will deal with three points. First, I believe that the right hon. Gentleman was quite wrong on the code of conduct that was worked out very rapidly by the four unions at the beginning of the dispute. It has been very widely observed. On a number of occasions in the House I have paid tribute to the way in which the unions have sought to respect the code of conduct and the way in which, when things have gone wrong, they have endeavoured, through the"hot line ", to ensure that the code of conduct was observed. I do not accept what the right hon. Gentleman said. This was one of the reasons for my statement today. Some of the action that is new being taken goes beyond the code of conduct. That was why I thought it was right to respond.
Secondly, the right hon. Gentleman asked why did I not make such a statement earlier. We are now dealing with a situation in which offers were made about five weeks ago, when an agreement had been worked out between Ministers on the one hand and the four general secretaries and negotiators of the four unions on the other. That is now almost five weeks ago. The voting has taken place and it seems to me that this is now a new situation, because it is time that this dispute was ended and the Health Service returned to normal.
When the right hon. Gentleman criticises me for having sought to frustrate the freedom of management, he has it wrong. He knows perfectly well that only in the first two or three days immediately following 22 January—" Demo Day "—I said"Let us see that we have some co-

ordinated response ". Within a very few days of that I then said"It is the right of management to decide"and I am certain that that was right. I am sure that those in management would not have wished me to tell them then how they should respond, nor would they wish me to do so at this moment.
Finally, regarding volunteers, the right hon. Gentleman and his right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition were virtually calling on the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State to make some national appeal for volunteers, utterly ignoring the basis of agreement that had been hammered out between voluntary organisations and the trade unions, through the volunteer centre, and the code of conduct which had been worked out, while absolutely ignoring the position taken by his right hon. Friend who was the Secretary of State in 1973. I have absolutely respected the views of the voluntary organisations and the code of conduct.

4.35 p.m.

Mr. Laurie Pavitt: The burden of my contribution to this debate, like that of my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton), will be concerned with the nurses. I only hope that I shall be able to put the case half as ably and efficiently as he has done.
First, I must take up two points made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on ancillary workers. I have no interest to declare as a NUPE member. I am not a sponsored Member but I am proud to be a member of that union, and I echo the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central that too often that which is bad is magnified out of all proportion, and that which is good is not even looked at. I have a great regard for Mr. Alan Fisher. I hope that NUPE will accept the advice that Alan Fisher gave four or five weeks ago and that has been given from the Front Bench this afternoon, namely, speedily to come into line with the other three unions and end the dispute.
I say to my right hon. Friend that the advice given to him by the right hon. Member for Wanstead and Woodford (Mr. Jenkin) was probably the nearest advice to disaster he could have had, because the whole point of action is that


it shall be productive and not counterproductive. Had a quick, instant reaction to events occurred, an extremely difficult situation could well have been even more difficult and even more exacerbated.
My second point follows that made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Corbett). Every hon. Member has received a circular from the main trade unions putting up a code of conduct on the way in which volunteers should be used. I hope that my right hon. Friend will now ensure that that circular is part of the advice that is given when problems of this kind are to be settled at local level, where there is a militant or unacceptable break away from what has been a regional or national responsibility, and that in those cases the people concerned will be fully advised of the code of practice agreed by the responsible trade unions.

Mr. Patrick Jenkin: The hon. Gentleman has referred to the code of voluntary practice. He will be aware that the voluntary bodies have recognised, in the light of recent and indeed earlier events, that the code which was negotiated nearly three years ago is now in need of significant revision. I hope that that will have his support. It will certainly have the support of the Opposition because the code has manifestly shown itself to be inappropriate in the circumstances of the last few months.

Mr. Pavitt: Or inappropriate to other circumstances. I am afraid my time does not permit me to talk about the whole of the reaction over the past years on the voluntary services in the hospital sector of the National Health Service. The right hon. Gentleman is quite correct in indicating that great advances that have been made are of value and the use of volunteers is to be praised in every section where they can be used. But this has to be done with some judicious understanding of the realities of the situation in the hospitals.
I wish to concentrate mainly on the problem of nurses' pay and will start with the old adage that"fine words butter no persnips ". I do not know where we got that motto from. In terms of the slogan of the Royal College of Nursing for its pay claim—" Pay, not peanuts "—I suppose it is equally true to say that the present nurses' pay does not buy very

much in terms of peanuts. I challenge my right hon. Friend with the fact that the DHSS, not only under this Government but under all Governments, has believed the same thing—that provided it says the right words, gives the right praise and speaks about the dedication of the people who are concerned in delivering health care, it can forget about the cash. If one makes a comparison with the nurses, precisely the same has happened with medical manpower.
For years Ministers have been saying how marvellous the general practitioner is; he is the bastion of defence against illness in the community, the leader of the local social services care team. But it is not the general practitioner who gets the distinction and merit award; it is the highly specialised consultant. It is about time that we praised the nurses and ancillary workers who are also devoted people. But those words are the height of hypocrisy whilst nurses and ancillary workers are amongst the lowest paid. It is time we put reality behind the praise of the nearly 1 million people working in the National Health Service who do so much for us all. I would class a good general practitioner as equivalent to any consultant in the hospital service and just as worthy of a distinction award. He is worth his weight in gold, and it is time these values were recognised.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central, but the Government should not consider the nurses as just a special case. There are many special cases. The nurses are an exceptional case. They are distinct from all other workers with worthy cases which many of us seek to promote. If I am able to carry the House with me in regarding nurses as exceptional and worthy of greater consideration than other special cases, I hope I shall also carry with me the trade union movement. In previous times the TUC has made a declaration that it will not piggyback on a recognised special case in pressing a claim for some other sector. I hope that one result of the recent concordat will be that trade unions will not use this exceptional case as a lever to assist some other sector if we are able at long last to give justice to the nurses and that they will announce this policy.
I claim the exceptional nature of nurses' duties on several grounds. The first


ground is that no other work demands so much humanity and dedication. I should like to give a few examples of this. A young student in the second year of her training goes into an intensive care unit. It nearly breaks her heart to see an elderly man thrown on to the floor and brought back to life three or four times in the pursuit of medical knowledge that may eventually save the life of a younger man. What an experience for her to endure at the age of 19 or 20. Then there is the nurse in a hospital for acute chronic illness who has established a good relationship with a patient and has to watch her patient die. All the time she has had to give encouragement and express optimism. She knows that she is fighting a losing battle, and she has to encourage her patient day after day until finally she loses the battle.
It is only the skill of the mental nurse in a locked ward that prevents a riot. A children's nurse has all her maternal instincts aroused. She has to watch the pain of the child and, in the acute stages of illness, she has a relationship with the child hour by hour which makes a demand on her which no other service makes.
The theatre nurse during an operation when life is hanging on a thread stands by all the time giving constant support. The district nurse has to do all that is necessary for elderly and geriatric patients, and that involves great devotion and many arduous jobs within the home setting.
The second count is danger. A generation ago we whispered the word"consumption ". At that time nurses had to take the risk of contracting tuberculosis. The position is precisely the same today with infective hepatitis. I quote the case of a nursing officer at Guy's hospital. In 1969 she was an agency nurse on the renal unit. She caught hepatitis and was away from work for nine months and had to go on social security. She nearly died. Hepatitis was not classified as an industrial disease and only £25 compensation could be claimed under the industrial accident scheme. All nurses on the unit with the exception of three caught the disease. I know the hon. Member for Reading, South (Dr. Vaughan) will be interested in this, as it is his hospital.

The House will recall the tragedy at the Edinburgh unit when, again, nurses died.
The standards of care is not all that is at risk on hospital wards. On 29 September at hand-over time a patient went berserk, nearly strangling another patient. It took both shifts to overcome him and remove him to a side ward. Had that happened an hour earlier there would have been on duty only one female enrolled nurse and two students.
The third count is responsibility. I have had the privilege of going round the wards with the consultant and his houseman, and I have watched the ward sister taking responsibility for a good deal of the advice given. I quote the case of a second-year student nurse on an accident and emergency ward, who says:
 On the night of 29 September I was on duty with a staff nurse on a 30-bedded male accident ward. We had two patients just returned from theatre, one with a transfusion, three others were on head injury observations. One young man, an arm amputee with a fractured leg, fell out of bed and in his confused state was trying to get out of bed all night. Then we had a patient from a mental hospital with a head injury who kept trying to climb over the cot sides of his bed. The staff nurse and I spent the night trying to control this patient.
How many people in other jobs would have to cope with problems of that severity?
I quote a similar case of responsibility supplied by a staff nurse:
 The sister returned, after sick leave, to find she was on a full ward with five totally dependent patients, two terminal, with one auxilliary who usually worked other hours and one voluntary worker. She was also on call for other wards. The ward is a long corridor with single and double rooms off one side only and is not easily managed with a full complement. Patients frequently need two- to four-hourly CDA medication which must be checked by a state registered nurse.
Count four is the case made by my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central. We are trying to catch up with generations of neglect. All Governments are to blame. They have entirely failed to bring this problem into proper perspective in relation to the requirements of the community.

Dr. M. S. Miller: I entirely agree with the categorisation made by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, South (Mr. Pavitt) of the reasons why he believes that nurses are not a special case but almost a unique case.


Does he consider that successive Governments have not gone far enough to remove nursing from the nineteenth century, Florence Nightingale, semi-voluntary aura? Does he agree that Governments have not gone far enough in instituting a nursing career structure in keeping with the professional status a nurse enjoys in these modern times?

Mr. Pavitt: I agree with my hon. Friend. I hope that the structure which will eventually arise from the studies of the Briggs committee on which we both served will help in this regard. To go on patching up time and time again will not help the nurses and we shall leave a headache for whichever party is in power by the end of the year. This time we need a permanent solution. I knew that my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central would have many of the facts and figures and that it would not be necessary for me to repeat them. I ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to take note of two or three additional aspects.
First, the nurses are unable to include productivity as an element in their final claim. Such an element is already recognised within the NHS for two groups, namely, ancillary workers and craftsmen, and also ambulance men. In the public services, for local authority workers and craftsmen and some grades of the Civil Service, a productivity claim is possible. The element of productivity in these cases is not a gimmick for finding a way round the percentage formula. In the groups that I have quoted there were productivity agreements long before they became part of the Government's pay strategy. Because of that, the nurses have even more right to extra consideration in any award that is made. They have been missing out for years on an element of pay already secured by many other people.
My second point concerns fringe benefits such as expenses. Nurses have to meet expenses out of an inadequate pay packet. Some nurses who have to run cars because their duties necessitate it receive nothing for doing so because if called in on an emergency they can telephone for a taxi which is paid for by the NHS. If a nurse is called out on a transplant case, for example, and tries to secure a taxi she may find when she gets to hospital that she is not needed after all

for it is too late. So she uses her own car. That is a costly journey for her. I cannot understand why my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer does not accept that a nurse's car should rank for a tax allowance as are the cars of those who say that their car is necessary for their work. This problem is even more acute for district nurses.
Community nurses who run their own cars are subsidising the NHS. This is demonstrated by a case discussed at a meeting which I attended. A man was doing 1,000 miles per month in his own car in order to do his job. Thus, he was subsidising the NHS to the tune of £70 per month. In no way can this be regarded as fair and I ask my right hon. Friend to address himself to these two important, though fringe, problems.
It can be seen from the early-day motions which have bombarded the Order Paper that the whole House and the nation are grateful that the nurses, in deciding between patients and pay, have put the patients first. They deserve further praise, not only for putting patients before their pay claim but for their efforts on behalf of the whole profession in many areas of the Service, including recruitment and morale, to ensure that present problems are remedied.
The case made by the Royal College of Nursing in its review of the state of British nursing in 1978 has been quoted from time to time. As standards continue to fall, individual cases can be heartbreaking for those experienced nurses who are working all out to remedy deficiencies in the Service.
An example is a hospital in the Southwestern area, where I am told:
 Many wards are staffed at night by auxiliaries with one sister to supervise the entire hospital. In this unit the sister acts up for the nursing officer and often, during the afternoon and evening, there have been two nurses for four scattered wards. Many times this has resulted in an elderly patient who has fallen out of bed not being seen or helped for a long period. Due to the shortage of staff patients are not up and ready for physiotherapy, this results in deterioration.
Two days ago I had a sad case from my own constituency. A constituent aged 83 went to a local hospital and received the customary, fantastic standard of devotion and care, and returned home. After a month he was admitted to


another hospital and during his terminal weeks the account of his experiences reads like something which might have been made into a novel by Charles Dickens. That is not the fault of the nursing profession. It is the result of the inadequate staffing of the Service and of our not giving enough support to the nurses. We are always trying to make do and mend with student nurses, auxiliaries, agency nurses and everybody because we have failed to recruit enough nurses to meet demands.
There is a case to be made for raising the morale of nurses who look after the elderly because there is no greater growth in the NHS than in the geriatric sector. With more nurses, training courses could be given for specialised care of the elderly. Though this is not the occasion for discussing figures, I ask my right hon. Friend to consider a comparison with the doctors' review body and the way in which doctors' pay has worked out in comparison with that of the nurses. I also ask him to ensure that whatever award is made the Government will provide the money. The finest award made to the nurses was the Halsbury award when 30 per cent. was given. But the nurses have now fallen back because the Government, having made that award, allowed themselves to rest on their laurels for the next three years.
Five factors have changed nursing care in the last few years: the Halsbury award, the units of medical time, the regrading of ward orderlies, the institution of extra-statutory days, and the establishment of the family planning service. None of those elements was funded by the Government. That meant that for those improvements—which the Government had decided on—to be brought about, nurses had to be sacked, recruitment cut down and money found from some other major source.
It will be nonsense for the Government to approve the nurses' pay award and not provide the extra money so that it can be paid. Funding this claim requires a Treasury decision. Perhaps we shall have an opportunity during the debate on the Budget to discuss the balance between private and public spending. It is not possible to meet the public expenditure needed for nurses' pay and at the same time to cut taxation with the result-

ing loss of revenue. The Chancellor decides for all of us what we shall spend publicly. We decide what we shall spend privately from our own income. I do not seek to interfere with the right of an individual to do what he likes with his own income.
I quote an example of the balance between private and public expenditure in 1978 in the area for which I am seeking help. In the private sector last year £3,925 million was spent on tobacco, £7,570 million on alcoholic drink, and £785 million on betting and gaming. That is a total of £12,280 million. I have no quarrel with that private spending because people may do what they wish with their money. But when I look at public expenditure I see that the whole of the NHS cost £6,730 million, and the whole of our education service £7,853 million—a total of £14,583 million. The Government decide in the Budget whether to spend the same amount on education and health as we spend privately on those three luxuries.
If one asked any mother with a sick child whether she would choose to spend that sum on nursing for her child or in some other way, she would say that she would prefer to pay the nurses more. We do not take that decision. It is a matter for the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
When studying comparability, we must use a peer group. We should choose people who went to school together and achieved the same O-levels and A-levels. There is a difference of £800 a year in the salaries of a senior nursing officer and a librarian who went to the same school and had the same education.
Time is of the essence. A speedy remedy should be found for the charge nurse in King's Lynn who has to live on social security because his own wage cannot keep him and his family. I demand a rephasing from 1 April this year rather than wait to start on 1 August. We must find a permanent solution. A system of six-monthly increments must be built into the comparability standards machinery. I hope that never again shall we have to stand here feeling ashamed of the way a civilised society has behaved and of our own exploitation of the nurses.

5.1 p.m.

Mr. A. W. Stallard: I intervene with trepidation since


I have been absent from the Back Benches for a considerable period of time. Both my hon. Friends the Members for Brent, South (Mr. Pavitt) and Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) are well known experts about the Health Service and nurses' pay. For those reasons, I feel a little inadequate. But I know that my passionate belief in the concept of the National Health Service, which is shared by millions, will be sufficient to see me through the ordeal. 
I confess that I am horrified at the state of the National Health Service and the way in which it appears to be being eroded. It cannot be denied that the National Health Service is seriously ill. An eminent professor wrote in a recent article:
 At the age of 30 most people know what they want to do in life and are safely on the ladder of a career, and yet at 31 the National Health Service is in such a state that it might just have started.
That is not pleasant to hear from an eminent professor who works every day in the NHS.
A recent editorial in the British Medical Journal stated:
 Most of the problems of the National Health Service are commonly attributed to lack of money.

Dr. M. S. Miller: Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be terrible if a doctor said to a patient of 30 or 31 years of age,"My God, you look terribly ill "? Surely the doctor should give the patient some encouragement. The analogy is that people should not knock the National Health Service and look only for the bad. They should give the Service encouragement to get better.

Mr. Stallard: I agree. I hope that I shall give some encouragement in my remarks. It is not my intention to knock the Health Service. I believe in it passionately and I intend to ensure that it continues and improves. It is sad that the National Health Service is knocked but it is knocked mainly by people who do not want it. I am in a privileged position. I can criticise it constructively in the knowledge that I wish it to continue.
The shortage of money is not all that is wrong with the Health Service, although much that is wrong can be attributed to a lack of resources. The current industrial unrest in the Health Service is about much

more than money, although the money aspects receive much publicity. The unrest is partly because the thousands of workers in the Service are frustrated because they can see the Service being eroded. The turmoil in the Health Service can be traced back to many ills. I shall outline some of the factors which contribute to the turmoil.
There is a loss of morale. This loss of morale comes through when I speak to people who work in the Health Service. The frustration is, perhaps, due to the number of reorganisations that have taken place, both from within and without the Service. The Service does not seem to have been settled for many years. People feel the uncertainty. The constant reorganisation has resulted in a loss of direction and purpose.
We have made leaps forward in recent years in terms of medical therapeutics, but medical management has become worse. Extortionate prices are charged for drugs. That could never have been envisaged by the pioneers of the service, such as Nye Bevan or Beveridge. The present over-administration is due to the constant reorganisations in the National Health Service as well as in the local authorities. The increased number of administrators has made the Service faceless and depersonalised. That must be taken into account.
There is much frustration among the doctors, nurses, ancillary workers, craftsmen and others who work in the hospitals. The frustration has resulted in a frightening growth of militancy among all those workers. We do not appear to have an answer to that militancy. Fine speeches, statements and chat across the Chamber on party political lines do not help. That is not the solution. We must probe more deeply and radically than we can in today's short debate.
Organisation is a key factor in the ills that beset the Health Service. Clearly we have not got it right yet, at any level, and certainly not at local level. Ordinary people can be forgiven if they have the impression that hospitals and the Health Service exist more and more for administrators and less and less for patients and staff. We should correct that. I hope that the Minister will say something about it.
I have mentioned the lack of money and resources, which is serious. I firmly


believe that, though we need more money, we also need some rethinking on the re-allocation of existing funds. Someone suggested that hospitals could be funded on a quinquennial basis rather than on an annual basis, which would, perhaps, enable the hospitals to budget, spend or save on a five-year programme. That would certainly be an advantage over the present 12-month period that is taken to discuss the matter, by which time, of course, we are into next year's argument. That might be a way of improving the allocation of resources.
Another suggestion which I have made—which never seems to get further—is for national funding, or cross-regional funding, of some of the services. Consideration of that is long overdue. It should not be rejected, as it has been over many years by all those administrators and civil servants who appear to be running the Health Service from that white elephant at Elephant and Castle. Incidentally, if we are talking about resources and their allocation, perhaps we could look at that monstrosity, Alexander Fleming House, if we want an example of bad management and bad spending.
I was distressed recently when the spokesman for the Government Department concerned refused national funding for a service in which I have a special interest—namely the detoxification centre that was to be set up in South-East London. Suddenly, with no warning, the proposal to fund that service from national resources was withdrawn. In my view it is perfectly reasonable to suggest that alcoholism is not a local complaint and that patients are not from any one locality. Patients come from all areas to such a detoxification centre. Therefore, there must be some national funding or, at least, cross-regional funding for such special services.
I could mention other services, such as the kidney unit in Hammersmith, which recently had to rely on private donations to keep going. That is a disgraceful state of affairs. I could mention the heart transplant units in other areas. I intend—as does my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mrs. Jeger)—to mention the special service for women at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital. Many of the patients of that hospital clearly come from an area much

wider than the immediate locality. There is, therefore, an argument for cross-regional funding for that kind of service. It ought not to be difficult, because it already happens with the social services, and is now being discussed in the Education Bill Committee.
There seems to be no reason why we cannot look at these services on a national basis where they exist, and give support from national funds. If that can be broken down into regions, one area health authority or region should be able to pay on a per capita basis for the services provided. That does not seem to be as far-fetched as I am always told whenever I raise the matter in other circles. I hope that that alternative funding arrangement can still be discussed and not swept under the miles and miles of carpet down at the Elephant and Castle. Who knows what else is underneath those carpets?
I should like to outline some of the immediate problems linked to the question of money and pay facing the National Health Service. One of the matters I should like to draw attention to is hospital closures, paying particular reference to the closure of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital. I was only too pleased to co-operate with my colleagues from Camden on both sides of the Chamber—including my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South and the hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Finsberg)—who have argued, battled and fought to retain this hospital over the years since it was threatened with closure.
Other right hon. and hon. Members will no doubt speak about hospital closures in their own constituencies, because there is hardly an area which has not been touched by this disease. However, I shall talk about the one that affects my constituents. This battle has raged between the faceless wonders at SE1 who direct the Secretary of State and the rest of us—and I can say"the rest of us"with confidence. I am sure that everyone will know that the main political parties inside and outside the House with whom I have had any contact support this hospital and the concept of what it stands for.
The trade unions involved at local, regional and national level support this hospital and what it stands for. The entire staff, and the staff of the other


establishments to which the Secretary of State hoped he could move the staff of this hospital, support the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital. Thousands of individuals from all over the country and from abroad support this hospital. We have had letters from America and Japan about it. My hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South has had literally thousands of letters of support for the maintenance of this hospital as a woman-to-woman service.
Patients—not just present patients but previous patients and those who would like to be patients in the future should the need arise—write regularly and express the hope that the hospital will be allowed to remain. The hospital is so famous and well known that women's organisations all over the country are supporting a campaign for its retention. Both of the local community health councils are on record as supporting its retention. If the Secretary of State and the Department could agree to some alternative funding arrangement along the lines that I have suggested, the area health authority would also wish to see the retention of this hospital in its present location. The only reason the area health authority is regrettably unable to give 100 per cent. support is to do with funding.
I can say, therefore, that it is the Secretary of State and his Department against all of us. They seem determined to close this hospital. I do not apologise for taking time on this, because I feel that I have been thwarted for a long time on the issue. For the benefit of those who may not have fully understood what it is all about, I shall say something about the hospital's history.
The EGA hospital, as it is known, grew from a small dispensary in Marylebone set up by Dr. Elizabeth Garrett—as she then was—in the 1860s, to offer medical care to needy women. It moved to its present, specially chosen, site in the Euston Road in the 1870s. The site was specially chosen for the obvious reason that it is near all the main line stations and everybody from anywhere could easily get to it. One can walk to the hospital from any of the mainline stations, tube stations or buses. It is a level walk so there are no problems for women with prams, taking children to the hospital. It was, and is, an ideal site for such a hospital. The generosity of British and

American women ensured that the freehold of the site was bought. A further freehold site in Barnet was donated for pre-convalescent patients and another freehold property in Belsize Park was bought for use as a maternity home.
A great deal of satisfaction was derived from working in the kind of unit that became established at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital. This happy state of affairs even continued for 20 years after the inception of the NHS in 1948, when the hospital voluntarily joined the NHS. I say"voluntarily ", because like the Masonic hospital or the Manor House trade union hospital, the EGA could have remained independent. But it did not. It voluntarily handed over all its property, and such money as it had, in good faith, in return for what seemed to be an assurance that it would be allowed to carry on its work.
I do not think that was an unreasonable assumption to make at that time. However, we came to the advent of the"big is good, small is bad"syndrome. Unfortunately, the Department is still in that state of mind. Most people—thankfully—are beginning to join those of us who never joined that school of thought. Many of us did not believe in the concept of tall blocks of flats, huge blocks of offices or everything on a massive scale. That was why we opposed the reorganisation of local government, along with the disappearance of places such as St. Pancras, and the reorganisation of the NHS.
There were many people—but not enough—who never joined that kind of outfit. Unfortunately those who joined were in the places of most authority. Many seemed to be in the DHSS, because it has always believed that to be bigger and bigger is better. It therefore went for these huge hospital complexes, in spite of the doubt among ordinary folk about the facilities provided at such complexes.
It was the advent of that concept in the 1960s—I was there, and I remember it—that dominated the Department's thinking. It was, therefore, decided at that early stage that the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital was too small and would never fit into the concept of huge, rambling hospitals which covered acres of ground. The Department took the view that there was no place in such a concept


for this well-loved, delightfully run hospital, and it therefore decided that it would have to go.
It was realised that there would be a riot if it was closed. We come to what can best be described as a conspiracy. It was not something new, because even now it is happening all over the place. I refer to the idea that, if one wants to close down something, one literally runs it down, denudes it of all its services and reaches the point where one can ask"What good is this place? It is useless. Therefore, we shall have to close it."
That is a tactic which, unfortunately, has been used by all Governments and local authorities to establish what they could not establish in a straightforward manner. Unfortunately, that has happened at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital. Maintenance and repair work was cut down, and the hospital began to look shabby and run down. New consulting staff were offered locum appointments rather than permanent appointments. In 1972, the convalescent home was taken away, ostensibly for the health needs of Barnet. It remained unused for six years.
Later, the nurse training school lost recognition by the Royal College of Nursing, not because the training was below standard but because it was not required for the area's training needs. Some people objected, and some of us issued a minority report at the time. However, the local area health authority did not object because, we were led to believe, it looked upon this as part of the rundown process. Perhaps the local AHA initiated it to prove that, later on, the hospital could be closed. As a consequence of losing that facility, the same AHA was able to announce a short time later that the replacement of trainee staff by trained staff would make the hospital too expensive and that as a result it would have to be closed.
That is a short version of the kind of deliberate rundown that took place at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital. Once the AHA got to that point—having engineered the whole thing—the Department was able to say"It is useless. It does not function. It is too expensive, it cannot be made to work. Therefore, it will have to close ".
That was when the gauntlet was thrown down. As I have said, it was readily

taken up by thousands of people who saw through that scheme right from the beginning and were determined, and still are, that that hospital shall remain a viable hospital in Euston Road.
An action committee was set up. That in itself was unique in medical history, because literally everyone in the hospital served on it—everyone from the consultants down to the ancillary staff. That does not often happen. There was unanimity throughout the hospital, as well as among the general public. After 15 months of expert agitation, the then Secretary of State decided in February 1976:
 that the present hospital building on its convenient site should be sold ".
Although she still maintained that it should be sold, she added:
its functions should be relocated in a district general hospital in the same area ".
In other words, the Department was determined to retrieve some part of its original decision. After all, civil servants at that level must never be seen to be changing their minds or admitting that they are wrong. Therefore, the Department decided to retrieve as much of the original decision in the hope that everyone would get fed up and that it would get the whole lot. It still had in mind that it would close the hospital. But the Secretary of State said that, provided it could be relocated in the same area, it could remain an identifiable unit.
Yet, before any discussions could take place—this is another interesting part of the saga that is not peculiar to this hospital—and almost immediately after the Secretary of State's statement, the main lift shaft serving the operating suite was inspected by the AHA and an exceedingly dangerous state of affairs was discovered. Of course, all operations at the hospital had to stop. Naturally, if there were dangers in the lift, no one would argue that operations should continue. Until then there had been 10 operating sessions a week.
It is strange that at that point, almost immediately before the ink was dry on the Secretary of State's statement, this inspection was made. A few months earlier a pathologist, who was inspecting the water supply, noticed something wrong with the lift and reported it immediately. Nothing happened. There was no inspection, presumably because


it was thought"Do not let us bother with that. If it packs in, well and good. It means that something else has gone." It is strange that immediately the Secretary of State made her statement this inspection took place and the lift was taken out of service.
Surgical work had to go on. It cannot be stopped overnight. Pending the expected, and virtually promised, repairs to the lift—at that time it was estimated that the repairs would take six months-hospitality was kindly offered for surgical cases in the nearby homeopathic hospital. But that could continue only until June 1976 after which all obstetric and surgical work was to be carried out at the Whittington hospital by courtesy of its staff, leaving out-patients and medical inpatients in the main hospital. The other freehold property that has been owned by the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital in Belsize Park was then closed because more services had been taken away and the attitude was that the premises in Belsize Park were not needed. Until a few months ago, when I last checked, it was inhabited by squatters. That is the sad sorry tale of how to run down a hospital and smash a perfectly good service in the process.
The total number of beds available to the EGA throughout this temporary arrangement was 75 compared with 157 beds that existed in 1972. Everything, including operating, was severely curtailed. The hospital staff were forced into the vexatious situation in which they now operate on three different sites, one in Euston Road and two four miles away on the other side of Highgate Road, with all the problems involved in trying to keep track of patients' records, X-rays and visiting, let alone the difficulties for patients and their visitors and relatives. The four miles between the separated hospitals carry probably the heaviest traffic in Britain. It is a crazy scheme. It was a further blow when the expected repair of the lift was finally cancelled. It is still out of action and has not been repaired. A certain amount of scaffolding had to be erected which made the place look shabby and rundown and contributed towards the idea that the hospital would have to be closed.
Further moves have taken place at Whittington. But the staff and action committee demanded that before any

interim or long-term closure or change of use occurred, the area authority and the Department should embark on a proper consultative process. They were sick and tired of the shilly-shallying, the pushing around and the shoving around, and suggested that matters should be brought into the open through the proper consultative process with a properly drawn up consultative document. The consultative process should have started when the closure was first envisaged. Instead, it was started when the matter was almost a fait accompli, making the issue much more difficult for people who were not directly involved to understand. Those people might ask"What is the EGA?"They might go and see this shabby, rundown building, with its scaffolding, and say"My goodness, that will fall down if nothing is done soon."
I am trying to put the matter in its proper perspective. As recently as yesterday, we had still not been able to get permission to repair the lift, although on that day my colleagues and myself were able to present to the Secretary of State a firm proposal for repairs using private money. We are not asking the Government for money. Money would be donated voluntarily by people who understood that there might be no return in getting the lift back in temporary use. The work would take four to six weeks and the repairs could last for up to five years. Even yesterday the Government were not able to give a decision for the work to go ahead. When the matter was last raised we were told that it was difficult to use private money in National Health Service hospitals because it was an assault on National Health Service property.
We were able to point to precedents. A hospital was recently saved in Newcastle because local doctors, the public and organisations rallied round and contributed £20,000 to build a lift, not repair one. An agreement was reached, with no inhibitions, to use the money. Why cannot the same attitude be taken about a hospital in the heart of the metropolis? I have mentioned the kidney unit at Hammersmith. A recent reply by the Secretary of State points out that this hospital has used private donations and subscriptions to keep the unit going.
The discussions that have taken place, certainly at regional level, were a


travesty. There was only one debate at regional level. If there was time, I could outline what happened. It was the lowest level debate that ever took place on any issue, let alone the closing of a hospital. At that meeting, however, the decision was taken to close the hospital. The Secretary of State afterwards gave 21 July 1978 as the closing date. That was to be final. No doubt everyone in Alexander Fleming House rubbed their hands with glee and said"My goodness, it has been a long haul. It has taken 10, 12 or 14 years to close that place, but at last we have managed it. The hospital is finished. There is a party in my room tonight. Bring your own wine and cheese." They reckoned without the House of Commons.
Because of the efforts of my hon. Friends, including my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South, hon. Members opposite, and noble Friends in another place, a number of debates have taken place to draw attention to the amount of support for this hospital and the special place that it occupies in the Health Service.
Following those debates and the pressure that was aroused—even after the final date had been set and the party held—the same Secretary of State, a month later, was able to say that the closure date had been removed, that the hospital would not close on that date and that another working party would be set up. I understand that the working party is to report soon but that the alternative at which it looked is worse than the present building, even with the scaffolding. The Secretary of State will obviously, I hope, have to think again about the terms of reference and look for further alternatives for this working party to examine.

Mrs. Lena Jeger: The hospital can be left where it is.

Mr. Stallard: I am pleased to corroborate what my hon. Friend has said. The only solution for the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital is to leave it where it is in Euston Road, to refurbish it and bring it up to date, and to establish a closer link with University College hospital across the road.
If one wants an example of Alice-in-Wonderland economics, one should com-

pare the closing of the EGA hospital, which at one time had 157 beds, while positive plans are being discussed at the same time to build a brand new unit for the University College hospital for 150 beds. I do not understand that. It is no good saying that University College hospital is a teaching hospital and that different standards apply. Beds are beds. It does not matter whether 150 beds are on this side of the road or directly opposite. One does not even have to catch a bus. The hospitals are so close that one could fall out of one bed and into another.
It is proposed to close the EGA because it is uneconomic. It already contains beds. With some refurbishing and a minimum amount of spending, it could be brought up to standard. The plan however, is to build a brand new unit across the road. There is bound to be an official explanation that fools everyone except ordinary people. Perhaps we will hear it later.
I have spent some considerable time discussing the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital. I entered this ballot on the Consolidated Fund debate today deliberately to do just that. No one involved in this matter needs to apologise if we take a few minutes. I have made some suggestions on hospital closures, although I have only dealt with one. I hope that my hon. Friends will deal with others because there are some which are just as serious which I should have liked to mention.
I should be overstaying my welcome if I were to make the speech that I had prepared on nurses' pay. Suffice it to say that the fact that I do not make that speech does not detract from my interest in and feeling about nurses' pay, which is the crux of the whole issue. Over the years we have expected loyalty of our nurses, and we have exploited their loyalty to the NHS. We have expected far too much of them. What we have done is nothing short of a scandal.
My hon. Friend the Member for Brent, South spoke in his usual elegant style. He is an expert on the nursing profession and its difficulties. He outlined some of the crazy comparisons that may be made. It is all very well to say that no solution will be found by comparing one with another. That is true. I do not think we shall find a solution merely by adopting that approach. However, to reject such


comparisons means that we reject comparability studies. The essence of a comparability study is to compare one with another and to examine relativities.
I am constantly being asked"Is it right that a person whose only skill is putting on gramophone records, or making noises on a loud electronic gimmick, should be able to amass a great fortune in a short time, whereas trained nurses, who are devoted and spend years in training, receive such poor pay?"I know of a nursing officer who has responsibility for a group of wards. In some instances nursing officers run small hospitals. She has received all the necessary training. She spent two years as a staff nurse and served three or four years in an assistant capacity. She takes home £51·20 a week. How can we justify that?
That sort of pay goes right down the line. A ward sister takes home £45 a week. A district nurse—these are not my figures but those of the Royal College of Nursing—takes home £45·20. A staff nurse receives £37, an enrolled nurse £34 and a student nurse £31. No wonder we cannot get nurses. No wonder the service is being starved. Surely our whole approach is wrong. We should be offering encouragement and incentives. We should not be encouraging people to learn how to operate gramophones and other such gadgets. Those who do so put many of us into hospital, where we find that there are no nurses to treat us.
Nurses' pay and our approach to it has been wrong for years. Certainly it has been wrong for the past 20 or 30 years. The Halsbury award was the biggest and most welcome step forward in nurses' pay. It delighted my hon. Friends and me. We were able to boast that it was naturally a Labour Government that introduced the study that resulted in the award. However, we have let that progress slip. We have returned to pre-Halsbury days. That is what my hon. Friends and I are angry about. We want to continue the progress that was made with the introduction of the Halsbury award.
It is not good enough to say that it was accepted that the nurses were a special case in 1978 and to relate that special agreement and special case to the 1979 situation. Let us back-date to 1978 on the basis of the Halsbury award and make some sense of nurses' pay, That would

be a reasonable solution to the problem faced by our nurses.
I am happy to stand alongside those who will not rest until the nursing profession is given its rightful due. That does not mean an annual ramsammy, with demonstrations and marches. That is the degrading and undignified approach into which we have pushed our nurses in the process of wage bargaining. We should not treat nurses and others who are dedicated and devoted in that way. Let us ensure that we get nurses' pay on the right lines once and for all and never again let it slip.

5.45 p.m.

Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: The references in some speeches to the shortness of the debate were somewhat unclear. To the best of my knowledge, we have at least until 10 o'clock tomorrow morning for the Consolidated Fund Bill debate. I do not propose to restrict myself, and I suggest that other hon. Members should not take any self-denying ordinance.
I welcome the belated but strong words of the Secretary of State. I echo the comment that we are glad that the Secretary of State was able to be with us. We hope that it will not be long before he is relieved of what is obvious pain. I add one comment. I hope that the unions will ensure that their members act in accordance with and not in breach of their rules and codes of practice. It is all very well to have codes of practice. We all welcome them. However, if unions are not prepared to ensure that their members follow them through, the unions must take the consequences. They must realise that there is a procedure in most union rules providing for branching when members disregard the instructions of their union.
As always, the hon. Member for Brent, South (Mr. Pavitt) deserved to be listened to because of the moderate language that he uses on these subjects that move all of us. That moderate language is much more likely to be listened to and to be found more convincing than the speech of the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton).
I take up the remarks of the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. Stallard). I shall confirm many of his comments on the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital.


The hon. Gentleman presented a most carefully reasoned case. I hope that the Minister of State, who has been subjected to a meeting on at least one occasion with the three Members of Parliament who represent the Camden area, will not think that a happy reply at the end of the debate will be the end of the saga. It will not be the end unless he is able to give us a satisfactory answer.
I am certain that the hon. Member for Fife, Central had the courtesy to tell my right hon. Friend the Member for Taun-ton (Mr. du Cann) that he would use gutter language in talking about him. The nurses I have spoken to over the past weeks have given me the impression that they do not want their case to be advanced by the hon. Gentleman with the language that he used today. That is the only comment I want to make about his speech.

Mr. William Hamilton: rose—

Mr. Finsberg: I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman very shortly. Unlike the hon. Gentleman, who did not give way when another hon. Member wished to interrupt him, I shall give way. I hope that those who want to ascertain the facts surrounding the nurses' case will pay more attention to the speech of the hon. Member for Brent, South.

Mr. William Hamilton: The nurses have applauded what I have been doing on their behalf over the years. I notified the right hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. du Cann) that I would refer to him. Probably the right hon. Gentleman is in the City making more cash.

Mr. Finsberg: That is typical of the snide remarks that the hon. Gentleman makes. I shall waste no further time—I trust that the House will not—on any remark that he had to make, except to acknowledge that it is correct that he has always fought hard for nurses. However, he spoils the case by the language that he uses from time to time.

Mr. Pavitt: rose—

Mr. Finsberg:: No. With great respect, I shall not give way to the hon. Gentleman. I was complimentary about him and there is no tradition of giving way when one has been complimentary.
I do not believe that there is an hon. Member who fails to sympathise with and

understand the case that is put in the House for the nurses. It seems unbelievable that any Government can fail to honour last year's settlement and make an offer this year in such unfeeling terms. Surely no one can doubt that the nurses have a special case. If it is described in the words of the hon. Member for Brent, South as an"exceptional case"or as a special case, I am sure that every hon. Member recognises that it is a just case. We should honour the silent vigil of the Royal College of Nursing. It may even move the heart of the Department of Health and Social Security. Not much else seems to have moved it so far.
The Royal College of Nursing has said firmly that it is not—

The Minister of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Mr. Roland Moyle): I am grateful for the support of the hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Finsberg) on nurses' pay. But where would his party find the money, given that his right hon. and learned Friend the Shadow Chancellor is always urging us to cut public expenditure?

Mr. Finsberg: The right hon. Gentleman will doubtless put his case, and my right hon. Friend will put ours. The money might be obtained by cutting down the waste in the National Enterprise Board and elsewhere, which would save money that could be better used, and also about £25 million which is being filched from the National Health Service by cutting out private beds.
The Royal College of Nursing has been demonstrating the dedication of the profession, but that must not be taken advantage of by this Government in their so far unacceptable pay offers. I hope that nurses represented by other unions will follow the example of the Royal College of Nursing, and that the Government will decide to deal with the nurses as a special case. They should prove that there is no need to strike and cause distress to patients in order to achieve proper recognition and reward.
Like the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North, I feel that there is another issue that should be raised and that is the closure of hospitals. I refer specifically to hospital closures in the London borough of Camden. All three Camden Members are present and hope, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to catch your eye. They are


united as never before on the issue—a most unlikely event that will probably never be repeated.
The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mrs. Jeger) has been a leading campaigner to keep the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital open, and I am sorry that she is not standing for re-election. There is another hospital close to her heart, and I shall not steal her words in relation to this hospital, although I am afraid that many of her words on the EGA will be used by her right hon. Friend and myself. There are rumours that the office at the Elephant and Castle would like to close the Royal Homoeopathic hospital. Attacks have been made not merely on the hospital but on the practice of homoeopathic medicine. In the end Parliament will decide, and Ministers must recognise that on that issue there are voices in Parliament that cut across party boundaries.
Ove 140 right hon. and hon. Members have signed the early-day motion on the EGA tabled by the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South and seconded by me. It is fairly strong stuff for such a substantial number of people to sign without a massive lobbying campaign, and had we wanted we could have had such a campaign. We had hoped that the pledge given by the right hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) that the hospital could be repositioned in a district hospital in the same area would be fulfilled. Without that, anyone with honour would assume that the process would be stopped and money would be spent on the EGA on its present highly acceptable site.
The history has been rehearsed by the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North. Women had to fight hard to join the medical profession. When they did, they became available for women who wanted treatment from other women. The EGA was an early result of that campaign, and there is as much need as ever for these special hospitals. The Minister has totally ignored the fact that we have a growing immigrant population. I have a substantial number of immigrants in my constituency, as have many London Members. Many women constituents who come to me are strict Muslims and do not want to be treated by men. If they go to a hospital they may be able to see a

female gynaecologist, but if they have a related cardiac or psychiatric problem, how certain can they be at any of our superb district general hospitals of those three specialties being performed by a woman? That does not exist, but at the EGA it existed in full measure before the death of a thousand cuts started.
The area and regional authorities and the Department of Health and Social Security find it inconvenient for the EGA to exist. To echo the words of the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North, a conspiracy exists to allow it to decay and finally to close. The community health councils have played an honourable part and tried to prevent the closure, but full nursing training was withdrawn because it was said that there was not wide enough experience available. But wards had already been closed because of a faulty lift and unsafe wiring, so there was not the breadth of experience needed, which must be evident to everyone but the Elephant and Castle. From then until now there has been little help from the DHSS. The closure was partly postponed while the Department set up a working party, and certain parliamentary tactics had to be used to force the Secretary of State on one occasion to come to the House to make the position clear.
As late as yesterday volunteers offered to pay for the restoration of the lift service, and when we saw the Secretary of State he did not undertake that his right hon. Friend would give a favourable answer tonight that these volunteers would be allowed to spend money on a National Health Service hospital. He said that he would consider the matter and speak to his right hon. Friend. If there are volunteers charitable enough to spend £6,000 or £8,000 restoring a lift, knowing that the hospital is threatened with closure and that the work can be done in four to six weeks by qualified engineers, it should not need a great deal of thought for even this Administration's officials to advise the right hon. Gentleman that he can safely go ahead without adding to public expenditure or jeopardising other Health Service expenditure. I hope, with a certain degree of confidence, that we shall get the right answer from the Minister tonight. There is a precedent for private money being spent on a National Health Service hospital in the North-East of England.
There is a clear need for special beds for women. The Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster area health authority is proposing to close 24 beds in the hospital for women in Soho. Members of Parliament in the locality received a circular on 28 November, and I was asked for my views.
It said:
 I enclose a copy of a consultation document approved by my Authority and being given wide circulation under the terms of HSC(IS)207 on the closure or change of use of health facilities.
It went on to say:
 The document deals with the circumstances which make it necessary to seek to close 24 gynaecology and radio-therapy beds in the Hospital for Women, Soho.
I sent my comments on this matter to the area administrator. I said on 5 January:
 I refer to your consultative document on the Hospital for Women in Soho. Provided that resources are transferred so as to ensure the retention of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital on its present site I see no objection to your proposals.
Since that date there has been a deathly silence from the Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster area health authority on that subject. The latest nasty saga repeats so much of the history of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital.
I turn now to the third hospital, St. Columba's, which is a long-established terminal hospital in my constituency. In a letter to our excellent local paper, the vicar of the Hampstead parish church, with whom I do not always agree but who always writes a splendid letter, said:
 As a Chaplain to the Marie Curie Edenhall Nursing Home in Hampstead I am acutely aware of the value of the magnificent continuing care afforded by Hospices and Hospitals like St. Columba's. There are all too few of them. As the Archbishop of Canterbury said recently when he stressed the urgent need for more of such Hospices, such institutions help to reverse the unfortunate trend in recent years to institutionalize medical care and dying. There is great need to enable those at home to offer the care that they can give and wish to give. These are institutions specially designed for terminal cases, where technical skills are married to deep but non-sentimental compassion and where arrangements are such that there is time for a loving relationship to be built up between patient and doctor and between patient and nurse.
That is a factor that does not fit into the statistics of the Kensington, Chelsea and

Westminster area health authority. I should add that this hospital has private funds of £150,000 which are in the care of the Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster AHA.
When the reorganisation took place—and I am not entering into that argument—St. Columba's hospital, which was originally located at Swiss Cottage, moved, because of the new civic centre, to the Spaniards in Hampstead. It was given to Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster instead of to the local area of Camden and Islington, where logically it would fit. In this case the logic of the Department does not seem to have worked.
Fairly soon after the NHS reorganisation, Camden and Islington AHA asked Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster to agree to the transfer of this hospital from one authority to the other. Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster agreed. However, big brother in the form of the North-West regional health authority stepped in and said"No ". To this day it has given no reason for that decision. I can only suppose that someone did not want to lose part of his empire. The transfer would have solved many of the problems and local people would have known what was happening.
I come to the next stage of this saga. I was suddenly telephoned by a member of the staff to be told that the area health administrator had instructed the hospital to stop admissions. I then did something that is totally alien to my nature. I am a square, and I believe very strictly in following both the letter and intention of the law. However, I told the staff to take no notice of the instruction until it was confirmed in writing—a thing which the bureaucrats love to do anyway.
I was told this at the beginning of March. The staff were first informed of this possibility on 15 February by the AHA. To this day the Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster area health authority has not had the common decency, good manners, courtesy or common sense to advise any of the local Members of Parliament in writing of its intentions. This is treating Members of the House with utter contempt. When the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North and I saw the chairman of Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster AHA, Dr John Dunwoody, we told him exactly what we thought of


him. At least at that stage he had the grace to apologise, but still we have had nothing in writing on which we could base the arguments on which we now must work.
I have had some documents given to me and I shall use them in whatever way I can to try to give facts to the House. It was mentioned in one document which eventually came that the closure was temporary. Why should a closure be temporary? Because temporary closures need no statutory consultation. They are a nice, clean, convenient way of running things down and no one can do anything. This is another way of allowing decay to set in. The hospital would be run down in the same way as the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital. It would be under-used so that the Department would say that bed occupancy was very low and very expensive and that there was not sufficient nurse training. It would then seek permanent closure.
In case I am accused of an exaggeration I quote from a letter from the Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster AHA (Teaching). It came from the district administrator, Mr. Hunt, and was addressed to all staff. I shall read just one paragraph:
 In practical terms this means that no more admissions will be made to St. Columba's for the time being. As the patient numbers decline, the point will be reached when the need for staff has diminished significantly, and ultimately, when there are no patients left, there will only be a requirement for staff to look after the building.
Could anyone with an ounce of feeling write that sort of letter? Could any chairman of an AHA allow that sort of letter to go out over the signature of a dedicated member of the staff? Why did the chairman not have the courage to put his name to that sort of document?
I stress that St. Columba's is not in a bad state of repair. It is just that Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster AHA is short of money for a variety of reasons, none of which is St. Columba's fault. I shall give five reasons that are contained in the documents I have had. These are excessive staff recruitment costs, rising drug costs, the engineers' industial action, the drop in private patient income and the result of the work of the resources allocation working party, which wants parts of London

to suffer more misery so that other people can have less misery.
One should not deal with resource allocation by cutting down on areas carrying out specialised work and with a mass of day-time population to cater for. Instead, the working party should tell these areas that they will not get any increase, but, on the other hand that they will not receive any less money and in time they can begin to reallocate. What has been done will happen in many other places where the working party has been allowed to get away with it. Which is easier, to try to close a hospital within the physical location of Kensington, Westminster and Chelsea—which would stir up the same hornet's nest as did the threatened closure at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital, with all the statutory implications involved—or to attempt to slide the closure through the back door?
I quote from a latter sent by the Health Service unions at St. Columba's and in the North-West district:
 The North-West District of Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster Area Health Authority, to which St. Columba's is attached, is £400,000 overspent. The following quotation from a document recently approved by the authority shows the incredibly callous thinking behind this move.
The hon. Member for St. Pancras, North will confirm that the chairman of the area health authority, Dr. Dunwoody, did not like the word"callous"being used. I am sorry that I cannot think of any other word that fits the situation. The document continues:
' St. Columba's hospital provides a service for the dying. Only 20 per cent. of the patients come from within Kensington and Westminster and Chelsea. It was considered, therefore, high on the list for closure'.
That extract from the authority's document indicates the reasoning behind the temporary closure decision. The authority could have tried for a permanent closure by means of statutory processes. Instead, it chose to do a fiddle and tried for temporary closure.
Not all members of the AHA are prepared to give their addresses. When I asked for a list of names and addresses I was told that the AHA members did not like disclosing this information but that if I wrote to the area administrator my letter would be forwarded. I appreciate that offer. However, when people


take on the public responsibility of closing a hospital, members of the public are entitled to know where those people live so that they may write and put their point of view to them.
Even if a permanent closure is decided upon, the local community health council, covering Camden and Islington, has no statutory basis. The CHC to be consulted would be the body covering Kensington, Westminster and Chelsea, not the council that understands the local conditions in Camden and the area where St. Columba's is located.
I asked whether there was still a possibility that Kensington and Chelsea would agree to transfer the hospital to Camden-Islington, which would be happy to accept it. I was told that the chairman of the Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster authority could not guarantee what his authority would do, and that he had said that once the decision was taken he did not see why the authority would wish to change it but that no money would be available, of course. When pressed, he said that it cost approximately £200,000 to run St. Columba's for a year, that in next year's budget, starting in April, the area would wish to keep the £200,000, but that St. Columba's must go to Camden-Islington without any money. I call that a dog-in-the-manger attitude. It does not want to run St. Columba's and says that no one else shall. I find that unacceptable. It would not be right to expect this year's costs to be transferred, as the money has been spent. However, I see no reason why the money should not be transferred in the new year. The chairman of the AHA said that a meeting of his authority was to be held yesterday. I asked him to invite his authority to reconsider its decision.
Today I received a helpful letter from the Minister of State in reply to my letter to the Secretary of State of three weeks ago. The Minister said he understood that the matter was being reconsidered by the AHA. I hope that he will say whether the authority took a different decision at its meeting yesterday. I look forward to hearing what he says about the matter. If the authority has not taken such a decision, I ask the Minister to use his influence, not statutory power, to ask Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster to

halt the temporary closure, to make certain that all the beds are occupied, and to assist in the transfer from Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster—which clearly does not want these people—to Camden-Islington. That would be welcomed by patients, their families and the staff. There is a long history of loving care in this terminal hospital. Those patients who do not go to St. Columba's for their terminal period will go into modern, expensive district hospitals such as the Royal Free hospital.
The Secretary of State received a letter dated 28 February from Dr. Skeggs, the director of the department of radiotherapy and oncology. On paragraph reads:
 I know I do not need to tell you that there is a serious shortage of terminal care accommodation throughout the country. In Hampstead, where we have both St. Columba's hospital and the Marie Curie home, Edenhall, the demand for accommodation is so great that we have at times to wait for six to eight weeks to transfer a patient. It is well understood that economies in the Health Service are being required, in spite of your reassurance that you have managed to make more money available for the improvement of the National Health Service. At the Royal Free hospital we are fortunate in having some of the finest facilities in the country for acute medical care and I understand that the cost of each bed works out at around £450 a week. Let alone the fact that from the humanitarian standpoint it is wrong for terminal cases to be nursed in the necessarily energetically active environment of a hospital designed for the care of acute cases, it obviously does not make financial sense to close terminal homes when the beds cost probably as little as one-third of the cost of beds in an acute hospital.
I look forward to hearing the Minister's answer.
St. Columba's is occupied by patients from a variety of health authorities. I take up the point made by the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North that there should be contributions from other area authorities for patients from their areas going to terminal hospitals. A similar arrangement applies in the education and social services. That arrangement would go a long way towards solving much of the problem. As over 90 per cent. of such patients come from within the London area, the regional authorities could make contributions without the necessity for the areas to make their own allocations. That would be a simple and common sense arrangement.
I do not want to say this, but I must. If the Minister is not prepared to agree


either to joint funding or to say that this should be done by an allocation according to the area from which the patient comes, I hope that he will at least ask the Kensington, Westminster and Chelsea area health authority to have enough courage to consider a permanent closure. I say that not because I want it closed but because full statutory consultation would then take place and the full weight of public opinion brought to bear on this problem. Until that happens, neither Members of Parliament in the area nor anybody else will have the full details—not because we have not asked for them but because they have not been given to us. Statutory consultation would enable information to be made available to everyone concerned.
I do not think that hon. Members can be accused of being partisan on this matter. I hope that the Minister will take on board my suggestion to close the loophole of the temporary closure, which means that no consultation is required. He could do it by simple administrative action, by issuing a circular. If nothing else comes out of the debate, I hope that it will have highlighted the anomaly. I hope that the Minister will step in and close that loophole.
I gather that the original decision for the temporary closure was decided, on officers' advice, by the AHA by a majority of one. A majority of one is always sufficient in Parliament. This decision did not even need the 40 per cent. that was not reached in Scotland in the referendum. None the less, I cannot believe that many Members of this House would have taken that type of decision on such a sensitive issue on a majority of one. I am sure that we would have said"Let us see what is the local opinion and look at it again next month." But, no, the decision was taken, and so far, up till yesterday, the authority has been prepared to pursue it.
I should like, in conclusion, to summarise the main points of my speech. First, I have made my views perfectly clear on the question of nurses' pay. I support the initiative and the methods by which the Royal College of Nursing is proceeding.
With regard to hospital closures, I have said that the Royal Homoeopathic hospital ought not to close, and that it ought

not, either, to be done by a series of snips, perhaps not by the Minister but by somebody else. Many hon. Members have been receiving letters from constituents who are worried not only about the future of the hospital but about the practice of homoeopathic medicine. These letters are not written without some justification.
I hope that the Minister will allow the temporary lift repairs to be carried out at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital. I hope, too, that he will then be man enough to say that 140 Members of the House deserve to have their views taken into account and that he will set up an independent inquiry into the future of the hospital on that site. I cast no asperations on Dr. Ford, a most capable official of the Ministry, who is chairing the working party, but in her own interest it ought to be seen that the decision that is put to the Minister in due course has come from an independent source and not from someone who is, faute de mieux, in the position of being one of the Minister's own officials. I would not want to be in her position, for, sooner or later, whatever decision her working party takes, some member of the public will say that this was never a genuine inquiry, however hard the members of that inquiry have been trying. I repeat my call for an independent inquiry into the future of the hospital.
I also ask the Minister to stop, by means of his influence, the temporary closure of St. Columba's hospital.
A real responsibility rests on the Minister tonight. In the light of the answers that he gives to us we shall be able to judge whether he really has a Department which cares for patients and those connected with the hospital service.

6.24 p.m.

Mr. Timothy Raison: My hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead (Mr. Finsberg) has presented a most formidable case. I pay tribute to him and also to the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. Stallard) for the way in which they have set out these very important hospital questions.
I do not propose to make a constituency speech this evening, although I am tempted to do so. My only reason for not doing so is that, as the Minister of State knows, very recently I had the Adjournment debate on the subject of


Stoke Mandeville hospital. If I may say so, I thought that the Minister's reply in that debate was very depressing and ungracious, full of bureaucratese rather than humane politics. He did not mention that Stoke Mandeville hospital does some quite exceptional things. Even in saying"No"to me, the Minister might have paid some tribute to the work done at that remarkable place.
While listening to my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North I could not help thinking that in London there is a serious problem of over-provision, whereas in my constituency, with a growing population, we have the even more difficult problem of under-provision. I want to press on the Minister the need for a much more sensitive understanding of the problems of those areas in which the population is growing quite rapidly. We have, in the county of Buckingham, the new city of Milton Keynes, which is still going ahead fairly fast. This imposes enormous pressures on the existing hospital capacity.
By any standards this has been a timely debate. At times it has seemed a little like a timeless test match. I have a feeling that it is the sort of debate in which Geoff Boycott would rather like to take part if he were a politician, with the prospect of debating until 10 a.m. tomorrow. I have come in rather more as a Randall or a Gower, to launch a few shrewd blows and then disappear from the scene fairly rapidly, rather than as one who seeks to build up a very long and powerful innings, such as we have just had from my hon. Friend.
It is a timely debate because there is tremendous anxiety at the moment about what is happening in the National Health Service. Although there are still very many good things happening in the Service, there are many things about which, inevitably, we are bound to be deeply concerned. Like other hon. Members, I welcomed what the Secretary of State had to say this afternoon. It seemed to me to be somewhat more resolute than some of the things that we have heard from him earlier on. What we really want to hear in the debate is something from the Minister of State about nurses' pay, with which the debate started.
Having heard the rehearsal of the case for the nurses put forward by several

hon. Members, I do not think that there is any need for me to go through those facts again. I want only to stand up and be counted and to say that I also take the view that the nurses should be regarded as having a very special case. Whenever I hear in detail what the nurses are being paid, I, like most other people, am rather shocked.
The Government must respond to public opinion and ensure that the nurses receive the kind of treatment that the country is demanding for them. If the Minister were to ask me where the money could come from, I could tell him, although I hope to deal with these matters in the public expenditure debate on Monday. A great deal of money is being expended in preserving and creating non-viable jobs, rather than on meeting genuine needs.
It is farcical that in my own county money should be spent on providing bogus jobs, in an area where there is no unemployment, when at the same time the ceilings of Stoke Mandeville hospital are falling down. In other words, resources must be allocated to the right place. The Health Service, in general, is in need of additional resources, but there are other areas in the public sector where savings could be made.
The Royal College of Nursing has specifically renounced the use of strike action. I, like some other hon. Members, have for some time been advocating the case for what is commonly called a no-strike agreement. I continue to advocate that case. Where we are talking of people in really essential services, such as nursing, the police and the Armed Forces, it should be made possible for them to renounce the right to strike. I am not saying that such an agreement should be imposed on the nurses, but we need to create a framework in which those in professions such as nursing, and some of the other essential services, should be able to renounce the right to strike or to take industrial action, and in return they should get cast-iron guarantees that their pay will go up with inflation. Whether it should be done by linking their pay to average earnings or to the rate of inflation is a matter for argument. Probably it should be by some sort of link with average earnings. This would be enormously beneficial. In particular, it would be beneficial to the people to whom it


is meant to be beneficial. If the nurses had felt that their pay would rise in line with earnings they would not have gone through all the hassle and trouble that they have faced. They would have been in a secure position.
The unions do not like that idea because, after all, union leaders believe in their ultimate weapon—the right to strike. A union leader is always reluctant to relinquish that right. On the other hand, if the matter were put to the rank and file of the profession I believe that they would take a different attitude. They would see that it would be greatly to their advantage if a system could be evolved by which the right to take industrial action was renounced and, against that, firm guarantees about pay were provided. Of course, it would have to be implicit that if—because of reasons of incomes policy—the guarantees were overturned—I do not believe that they should be—the right to strike would be revived. We should give serious consideration to that matter.
We should also examine the pay of others in the National Health Service. I accept that some NUPE members are very badly paid. It has also become apparent during the last few weeks that a terrible muddle exists at the lower end of the pay scale. I have talked to members of NUPE in my own constituency, and many matters have been discussed. Something that cropped up time and again was that because of low tax thresholds and the mish-mash of benefits there is no longer a rational relationship between pay and reward.
I derived from a recent parliamentary question that if someone was earning £45 per week in November 1977—a low wage—a year later, in November 1978, after a 5 per cent. increase, his take-home money, after tax and benefits had been taken into account, would have been just over £44 per week. However, if he had received a 15 per cent. rise, perhaps as a result of industrial action, his net pay would have been £43 per week. It is farcical that someone can receive less from a 15 per cent. pay rise than from a 5 per cent. one.
I realise that the reality of selective benefits is that they linger on for some months and that it is some time before the figure that I arrived at is reached.

Nevertheless, there is not a sensible relationship between pay and reward, and something must be done about that. The one thing that we can try to do is to raise the tax threshold as rapidly as possible, although the economic position does not make that easy. That is a measure which is in the power of Government and will have to be taken if we are to emerge from these disputes.
There is a good case for taxing some of the other benefits. That is an administrative problem. However, rather than introduce the administrative apparatus necessary to do that, the threshold should be raised and the unfairness and cause of resentment will disappear.
We should be worried about low pay in the public services, and I have always felt sympathy with those who have expressed their concern, although I have no sympathy with some of the actions that we have seen. On the other hand, we should look realistically to see whether the best use is being made of manpower in the National Health Service. I recently spoke to a doctor at a well-known hospital where there are about 250 beds. He told me that at his hospital there were 80 porters. In another hospital down the road—with about the same number of beds—there are 40 porters. As an outsider, it is not for me to pronounce which hospital has the right complement of porters, and I shall not make that judgment. However, I have a shrewd suspicion which is nearer to employing the right number.
The National Health Service has not planned its manpower use well but it has suffered from not having tight management. We all know why that is. When there is no profit and loss account or financial incentive in the background to look carefully at the numbers of persons employed and how they are employed, there is a tendency for numbers to rise. It is often said that administrators like the idea of having many people working under them rather than few. That may well be true. However, the problem has been highlighted by recent events and it must be tackled.
There has been a lack of leadership from the top in the National Health Service. There are many solutions to the management problem, and one of those will have to be the introduction of cash limits. I believe that the National Health


Service needs more money. Therefore, I am prepared to see the cash limits of the National Health Service raised. If the nurses are to be treated as a special case the extra money will have to be found. But I believe that the cash limit system is right in principle, though I do not think that those sitting at the centre can determine how every penny of money will be spent.
A system of devolving the spending power of the National Health Service and its management within proper limits should be brought into operation. Comparability has been sanctified by the setting up of the comparability Commission but it is not right that the Commission should have excluded from its remit an examination of efficiency and productivity. It does not make sense to look at proper pay levels and make comparisons with other industries and other occupations unless efficiency and productivity are taken into account.
The poor leadership at the top of the National Health Service is partly a matter of personalities, but it is also because of the structure of the Health Service. One matter that has emerged time and again in recent weeks is the great ambivalence about who is responsible and accountable and who is running the show. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Wan-stead and Woodford (Mr. Jenkin), I am glad to see the Secretary of State back in the House. However, I believe that he, too, is being ambivalent about the matter. Much of the time he says that he cannot make certain decisions and that they are for local negotiation and handling. When I spoke about people who take selective action, the Secretary of State said that he could not deal with that matter and that it would be dealt with by local management. Statutorily he is responsible, and he cannot duck these matters. Nevertheless, even if I am correct about that, he has today given a clear lead on the use of volunteers—rather belatedly as my hon. Friends and I would say. He gave strong guidance to the area health authorities throughout the country on that matter. Therefore, on two comparable issues, the Secretary of State acknowledges one as lying within his province and yet he treats the other as being exclusively a matter for local management.

Dr. M. S. Miller: The hon. Gentleman referred to cash limits and, at the same time, evinced a sympathetic attitude towards the funding of the Health Service when he said that he thought it should have more money. Is he aware that a recent survey of several countries, including the United States, France, Germany and Sweden shows that Britain has spent very much less per head of population on health than have those countries? Does not that indicate that we are not spending nearly enough on health, and that we are getting a good Health Service on the cheap?

Mr. Raison: I agree, and I have already argued that matter. Another factor is that our economy is not as effective and productive as the economies of those countries. When our economy is creating more wealth, we can increase the amount that we spend per head on the provision of health services. We are not doing that, and that is the root of our problem in this and other social services.
At the time of the supervisors' dispute in the autumn, which did so much damage in terms of lengthening waiting lists and so on, I received a letter from a senior NHS personnel officer who said:
 This dispute exemplifies in the classic manner the management vacuum in which senior managers in the field are typically expected to operate…An even more craven absence of management resolve was recently exemplified in relation to a dispute concerning a claim by Professional or Technical ' B ' staff Whitley Council unions for a reduction in the hours of normal working from 38 to 37. The unions nationally unilaterally recommended their members to work a 37 hour week. Management nationally and locally took the view initially that a pro-rata reduction in pay should be made whenever it was absolutely clear that hours had been reduced without authority. Imagine our feelings as managers when within the last week formal advice has been received to the effect that deductions from pay so effected should be re-imbursed and yet no indication has been received that an agreement on this issue has been reached. Not unnaturally some of the staff who had worked a normal 38 hour week are now inclined to press for extra payment ".
I know that the story of the 37 and 38-hour week is a complicated saga which went on for some time, but it showed the almost despairing feeling of managers in the NHS that they did not know where they stood or what steps they could take. It was a clear weakness to make such a concession to workers who had unilaterally reduced their working hours.


That, together with the way that the supervisors were handled, did much to add to the excessive demoralisation in the NHS.

Mr. Ennals: The hon. Gentleman knows that the letter that he read is an old one, and I am sure he recognises that managements now know exactly where they stand. There was a period when we suspended the rigid application of the rule that if a person worked for less than the period for which he had contracted he should be paid less. We did that in the hope that it would enable an agreement to be reached in the Whitley Council. Unfortunately it was not possible to reach an agreement acceptable to the Government and that suspension was lifted and we went back to the strong position that we now take. I hope that the hon. Gentleman does not wish to mislead the House by implying that managements do not know exactly where they stand.

Mr. Raison: I have no wish to mislead the House, and I have not done so. The letter was written towards the end of last year, but the problems outlined in it have led to great confusion and a lack of confidence among managers, who do not know where they stand. That is not a tolerable situation.
The problem of waiting lists has become extremely serious. I know that it is a long-standing difficulty, but it has been getting worse and recent industrial action—perhaps last year rather more than this year—has inevitably added substantially to the length of waiting lists. We all regret that, because every time that the list lengthens, someone else suffers.
I wish to repeat to the Secretary of State a suggestion that I have made before. The problem should be approached in terms of implementing a crash programme of catching up. It is intolerable that waiting lists have become so long, and I hope that the Secretary of State and his Department will look at every possibility of bringing in additional resources in order to catch up.
That may mean going to the Ministry of Defence and asking for better use to be made of Service hospitals. I know that they already help the NHS, but a number still have spare capacity. I also realise that there may be financial problems over who is to pay, and so on, but they should not be allowed to override the

necessity of reducing waiting lists. I hope that the Secretary of State will go to the Service hospitals—and private hospitals—and seek help to overcome the terrible problem of waiting lists. I should be surprised if he did not get a favourable response from both quarters.
I do not intend to abuse the Secretary of State, but the job of running the DHSS is too much for one man. The NHS is going through severe troubles which will not disappear overnight. Dealing with those problems will be more than fully demanding for one man, and if he is also given responsibility for our vast and ever-burgeoning social security system, we are imposing an impossible burden on him.
Perhaps my suggestion should be directed more to the Prime Minister than to the Secretary of State, but I believe that we must split up the DHSS. The Minister for Social Security is in the Cabinet, and I am not saying that he does not work hard, but that is not enough. Sometimes we must look at the organisation of the Government in terms of the burden placed on Ministers and the importance of what has to be done. The time has come for us to have separate Secretaries of State for health matters and for the social security side. There are also tremendous problems on the social security side. The relationship between social security and tax needs much more consideration.
My suggestion would not necessitate a major reshuffle within the DHSS. I understand that the health and social security sides are not closely integrated except at certain points, for example in dealing with the disabled. It may be thought that it would be a mistake to split up the administrations, but we have effective precedents for splitting up the work of the Secretary of State while keeping common services. That has happened in the Department of the Environment with the appointment of the Secretary of State for Transport. There are a number of common services between the two Departments, and that splitting up was achieved without too many problems. The same thing happened to the old Department of Trade and Industry. We now have the Departments of Prices and Consumer Protection, Trade and Industry, which have a number of common services.
It is to the credit of the civil servants involved that they have been rather clever


and sensible in ensuring that life at official level can go on without great disruption even if sensible political decisions are made about having separate Secretaries of State. The hon. Member for St. Pancras, North told us, with a good deal of wisdom, that big was not that beautiful. The DHSS is an example of that. I am not saying that my proposal is necessary because of any personal failure of the Secretary of State. It is simply that the job is much too big and important to be done by one man.

6.48 p.m.

Mr. Julian Ridsdale: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) for initiating the debate and. particularly, for giving us the opportunity to discuss nurses' pay. Those of us who have visited hospitals and seen the devoted service of nurses know that they should be treated as a very special case. I am particularly disturbed that since the last pay award nurses' pay has been allowed to fall grievously behind.
I am glad to see the Secretary of State in the Chamber. I do not wish to be unkind to him, but he must take some of the responsibility for what is happening in the NHS. The Service is facing a crisis because of lack of funds. It would have been better if the Secretary of State, when he realised the problems that were arising, had resigned dramatically in order to make the country realise that the Government appreciated what was happening and that the Service was at crisis point.
What disturbs me is that I hear the same argument every time I ask that more money should be spent. I am asked"Where is the money to come from?" I would say, as my hon. Friends have said in regard to the £800 million, of which news was leaked recently, being paid out to industries which will not make a profit, how much better it would be if that money were diverted into services which were needed, and which would be worthwhile, so that catching-up takes place.
I am disturbed over the question that has been raised about the difference between our Health Service and health services abroad. I can well remember my visit to Germany and Japan in 1964 when I compared the health services in those countries with ours. At that time we were proud of our Health Service. Because

the Germans and the Japanese have concentrated on making wealth, they are now able to have health services that are twice as good as ours. We are accused of saying how bad the situation is here, but we look at the broad general problem today; and it is that here we are not making wealth, the economy is not making wealth, because of the failure of Socialist Governments to give people incentives in the right sector. When we see what has happened in Germany and Japan and the state of the health services in those countries compared with ours, we realise, taking the broad general picture, why we find ourselves in this position and why our Health Service today is at crisis point.
I am very glad that my hon. Friend raised the question not only of the nurses but also of the ancillary workers because many of us will know that there are workers in our constituencies who are trying to live on low wages, £45 a week, and then finding themselves being taxed, and they know very well that the tax thresholds have to be raised. This is a much broader question than just the detail of the lower paid workers. It is a question of ensuring that the country's resources are deployed so that we are able to make the kind of wealth that Germany and Japan have been able to make, so that we can have the kind of health service that we need. In saying the Health Service is at crisis point, one naturally turns to one's own constituency and sees the situation which has arisen in those parts of the country with which we deal personally.
Naturally, during the debate many London Members have asked for more money to be spent on London services, but over the last 15 years my constituency has grown by almost 100 per cent., mainly by people coming from North and East London and other places, without the reallocation of funds. On the nursing side alone the increase in pay for Essex as a whole would be £7 million, but that would not be enough to get the recruitment we really need in our hospitals. Going round one's own hospitals one sees the shortage in the nursing profession and realises the kind of sums that should be given so that we can recruit nurses. This would mean even more than the £7 million which the Minister has been told we need in Essex as a whole.

Dr. M. S. Miller: There are more nurses now than ever before in the history of the Health Service.

Mr. Ridsdale: I know the hon. Gentleman is full of statistics. I wish he would come to my part of the country, North-East Essex, to understand the shortages in the hospitals.

Dr. Gerard Vaughan: If I may help my hon. Friend, there are more nurses than ever before, but there is also a grave shortage of nurses, because more and more is being asked of the nurses.

Mr. Ridsdale: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, but the problem in North-East Essex hospitals is that there are not enough nurses. The Minister knows very well that Essex is under-funded by £20 million on a budget of £100 million. He knows the kind of cuts that have to be made in such a situation. He also knows that in the Colchester district the number of people awaiting admission to hospital has risen from 2,855 to 4,431; and 264 people have been waiting for more than one year for surgery classified as non-urgent, despite being in pain and great disability. It is complete and utter nonsense for the hon. Member for East Kilbride (Dr. Miller) to interrupt me and say there is not a shortage of nurses. It shows that he has not been in touch with the kind of problems that I have in my constituency.

Dr. M. S. Miller: The hon. Gentleman should not get so excited about it. All I was trying to point out was that there are more nurses than ever before, and it does not necessarily follow that, because there are greater calls made upon nurses, making more money available to the nurses would necessarily recruit more. There is great difficulty concerning skills of all kinds in the country. It is not just a question of money.

Mr. Ridsdale: Unfortunately, because of today's philosophy, we have equal shares of less and less and we are now finding that we are having equal shares of misery under Socialism. It is that kind of attitude and the philosophy behind the hon. Gentleman's comment that has brought us to this position. The hon. Gentleman may say I am getting rather excited and disturbed, but when one understands the situation in my con-

stituency in North-East Essex—and, as the Minister, who is an East Anglian Member, knows, not only in North-East Essex but in East Anglia as a whole—one knows how near to breaking point the Health Service is in East Anglia and Essex, too.

Mr. Ennals: I am sure the hon. Gentleman will recognise that, as a result of the policy that I, as Secretary of State, have been pursuing of the reallocation of resources, those parts of the country, of which East Anglia is one, which have been traditionally deprived of resources over the years are now getting a substantially faster rate of growth than the national average simply because we are trying to ensure that funds go to places where the need is greatest.

Mr. Ridsdale: The Minister may say that. Nevertheless, the waiting lists are increasing. There is a two-year waiting list for eye cataract operations. The Minister knows very well of the kind of mentally handicapped people who have come to my part of the country, having been taken out of mental hospitals and put into guest houses without adequate supervision. Indeed, he knows of the serious fire that occurred in my constituency because of inadequate supervision. This is why I feel strongly. This is why I may be excited. But I am most disturbed to see the breakdown of the Service. I do not know how the Minister can see these things happening without protesting to the Chancellor of the Exchequer about what is happening. I am surprised that he has not resigned before now.
We must have a catching-up operation as quickly as possible on the question of the nurses and ancillary workers. But, on the broad general picture, I do not believe that the problem can be solved, as I have told my nurses and others, until we have a change of Government and a change of philosophy. The situation reminds me very much of 1951 when the Government and Ministers were saying"We cannot end rationing and we cannot end controls"and then, at the end of it all, we had 13 years of good Conservative rule that made wealth for the country. We have had 12 miserable years of Socialist rule that have brought us to this situation and equal shares of misery. I only hope that before long


we shall see the resignation of this Government and a new Government that will be able to make wealth for the country so that the nurses and the skilled can get their just rewards.

7 p.m.

Mrs. Lena Jeger: After more than 20 years in the House I am no stranger to having my best speeches made beforehand by other hon. Members. Today I do not complain about that because I much appreciate the help I have received both in the debate and outside the House from my hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. Stallard) and the hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Fins-berg), who have co-operated in a way which the hon. Member for Hampstead rightly described as unusual. I do not mean that we are not on friendly terms, but we have worked especially hard together and I much appreciate their help.
I have been concerned for a long time about the problems of nurses. I confess that I never got further than being a wartime VAD, but I shall never forget the strain of those years, working at a casualty clearing station after D-day, and going out on a mobile surgical unit in the blitz. This is no sudden concern of mine, because those experiences have stayed with me.
Today, nurses are under even more strain because they are expected to add to their general bedside care and compassion totally new standards of scientific understanding and sophisticated treatment which make their job much harder than it was in the days when people expected not much more than kindness and attention. Of course it makes their job more interesting, but it demands higher standards of general education and higher levels of concentration and endurance. Many processes in modern hospitals are highly skilled and difficult. These new demands all add to the case for the nurses, men and women in the profession, getting much better pay.
If I were still nursing I would feel a bit ambivalent about this debate. I would hear hon. Members showering marvellous compliments on the nurses for all the wonderful things they do, but unless at the end of the day there was a firm com-

mitment I would go away from the House very fed up. It is not a question of another Halsbury type one-off award. We have to get this subject right, as we have to get the rate of pay of all workers in the public service right. Otherwise we just have the swings and roundabouts of demands, strikes and awards, which is not good enough.
I want to make one or two unkind remarks to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. The disastrous inheritance of the Tory so-called reorganisation—which I prefer to call disorganisation—of the Health Service left the Labour Government with a terrible legacy. Many of the matters which have been raised today and which are much in our minds will be considered by the Royal Commission on the National Health Service. It would be helpful if my right hon. Friend were able to say when we might expect the Royal Commission's report. We cannot suggest any fundamental reforms until we get it.
There is one policy of which my right hon. Friend is very proud, and to which he has just referred. That is this ugly expression RAWP—the resource allocation working party. I take his point, and appreciate his difficulties, but I find in practice that arid statistics are being used far too rigidly. For instance, in my constituency the last time that I counted—I am never quite sure of the up-to-date figure—there were 13 hospitals. I am proud that we have some of the most famous hospitals in the world in Holborn and St. Pancras—Great Ormond Street, the National hospital in Queen's Square, the Throat, Nose and Ear hospital in Gray's Inn Road—but in no way can these great hospitals be regarded as part of the local hospital service.
If I go into one of them it is quite unusual to find a constituent there. In Great Ormond Street hospital there are children from all over the country, indeed from all over the world. I am proud and glad that people travel across continents to come to these hospitals, but when statisticians at the Elephant and Castle do their sums and tell us that we locals are over-bedded, that strikes me as ridiculous. University College hospital for instance, because it has to provide what is ungraciously called teaching material—which is how the doctors refer to the patients—over a wide range of


specialties, cannot just be treated as the local cottage hospital. People are referred to it from a very wide area.
Another idiotic aspect of the arithmetic is that it is always tied to the population. No one at the Elephant and Castle is bright enough to think out whether that means day-time population or night-time population. In central London there is an enormous influx of population in the day time, with the incidence of sudden illness, accidents, road accidents, and so on. There is also an increasing tendency, which I think we should encourage, for people who have to go to out-patients' clinics for fairly minor ailments to go to the clinic which is near their place of work, thereby losing less time from work and often avoiding difficult journeys.
When I visited the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital on Monday at lunch-time the out-patients' department was full. Many of the out-patients were office workers who had come in for a check-up, taking no time off from work. It is unrealistic to base the number of beds on the number of people who live in an area.
My right hon. Friend might tell me that he has given us a little bonus in respect of the teaching hospitals, but it does not read like it. I have received an extraordinary document called the area strategic plan which states categorically that the Royal London Homoeopathic hospital is surplus to requirements and should be closed.
To whose requirements is it surplus? It is not surplus to the requirements of those who seek homoeopathic treatment or of homoeopathic doctors who wish to practise homoeopathy. It certainly cannot be described as surplus in relation to other homoeopathic beds in the region, because there are none. That is an outrageous statement. Is Parliament to have no voce in this?
Not long ago an early-day motion asking for the continuation of the homoeopathic hospital was signed by about 230 hon. Members from both sides of the House. My right hon. Friend may say, as his predecessors said until I was tired of hearing it, that homoeopathy within the National Health Service will be allowed to continue as long as there are patients who want it and doctors who are prepared to practise it. But how does

that square with a proposal from the officers to close the only homoeopathic hospital in this part of England?

Mr. Ennals: I give my hon. Friend the assurance that no such decision has been taken. She will understand that in preparing their plans areas look years ahead. They may reach a certain conclusion which becomes open for general consideration in the area, the region and elsewhere. I assure her that no decision has been taken about the future of the Royal Homoeopathic hospital.

Mrs. Jeger:: I am most grateful for that assurance, because further on the letter says
 the closure of the Royal Homoeopathic hospital and the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital should be vigorously pursued.
I do not know how vigorously the Minister is pursuing these closures.

Mr. Ennals: As I understand the procedure, if the area authority reaches a decision about the future of a hospital it has to consult before it reaches that decision. It must put its proposal to the region and also consult the community health council. Such consultation takes a considerable time, and if the community health council does not agree with any such recommendation the matter has to be determined by the Secretary of State. None of those procedures has even been started.

Mrs. Jeger: I am grateful, but what the Minister has said is a contradiction of the words"vigorously pursued."

Dr. M. S. Miller: This is an issue about which I also have had letters. I did a homoeopathic course during my years in medicine and found it extremely interesting. But if the situation is that homoeopathy is not being pursued as a career by doctors—I hasten to add that the only homoeopaths that I would care to allow to continue are those who also have medical degrees—it may be because there is not any great demand for it. I am saying it is possible that there may not be a demand in the future. But if there is the possibility of closure my right hon. Friend should pursue with vigour the maintenance of the hospital by ensuring that those people who still want homoeopathic treatment let Parliament—not the officials at the Elephant


and Castle—know so that we can do something about it.

Mrs. Jeger: I assure my hon. Friend that there will be a further petition on this subject. It is calculated that over the last two years the hospital has had inquiries from over 35,000 people who wish to be patients there. I am not making a speech in favour of homoeopathy. I just about know what it is. My husband was not a homoeopathic doctor but this hospital is in our constituency and we had very good relations with it. My husband always took the view that if anybody wanted homoeopathic treatment he should have that freedom of choice.
Time after time, from the earliest debates on the National Health Service, Ministers of both parties have affirmed the right of the patient to choose homoeopathic treatment. When I speak of homoeopaths, I am talking about those who are also qualified medical practitioners. It would be a breach of undertakings given in this House if anything were done to endanger the continuance of that free choice.
However, there is more than one way to kill a cat. The Government are using another one here, because postgraduate grants are not paid to qualified doctors who want to do a course in homoeopathy. We are told that the reason for this is that the postgraduate medical deans and the Council for Postgraduate Medical Education have total say in giving our money to whichever doctors they choose. This is extraordinary.
I received an answer to a question on 26 April 1978 when I asked whether postgraduate doctors could even claim expenses while they were on these courses. I was told:
 Postgraduate medical education is primarily for the professional educational bodies concerned, especially the Council for Postgraduate Medical Education. The Council's view is that training in homoeopathy is not of sufficient relevance to modern medical practice to warrant financial support for courses for general practitioners and the post-graduate deans have accepted their advice."—[Official Report, 26 April 1978; Vol. 948, c. 601–2]
What about the patients? What say do we have? Who are these people who are breaking undertakings given to this House by previous Ministers of Health that homoeopathy would be available in

the National Health Service as long as patients wanted it and doctors were prepared to practise it? This use of public money must be made accountable to this House. We cannot have the Minister washing his hands of it and saying that because the medical mandarins do not like marigolds, nobody in the country may have a homoeopathic doctor.
This is causing a great deal of hardship, because many people I know who want this form of treatment have to go to private practitioners for it. The lack of facilities for doctors to take extra training means that very few homoeopathic doctors are practising in the National Health Service.
At least one very important lady in this land has a homoeopathic doctor. The patronage that Her Majesty the Queen gives to the hospital is a great encouragement. It is not playing fair for local officials to say that they will vigorously pursue the closure of the hospital. The Secretary of State denies that but then the Minister says that there is no money to train homoeopathic doctors.

Dr. M. S. Miller: I would be willing to have a wager with my hon. Friend that no homoeopathic doctor was responsible for any case of thalidomide deformity.

Mrs. Jeger: I am grateful for the intervention of my professional Friend because I was about to say that while we talk about the National Health Service needing more money, what is eating up the resources is the drugs bill—the pharmaceutical products—to say nothing of the profits, which are made out of them as well as the harm, and potential harm, and the uselessness of many of them.
There is an awakening interest all over the world in more natural forms of medicine. We are becoming more sensible about these matters, and it would therefore be inexcusable if either through this financial back door, this execution by malnutrition, or by a decision to close the hospital we put this trend into reverse.
Consideration is being given to a scheme to make a special hospital authority for the three adjoining hospitals, Great Ormond Street, the National and the Royal Homoeopathic. I receive many


letters—I have such a large file that I was not able to carry it—saying that this is still being considered. I hope that a decision can be taken fairly soon because it is very unsettling for a hospital to feel so uncertain of its future. It is not fair to the staff and it makes it very difficult for the authorities to plan ahead to work out improvements or to decide on policy.
The Minister would be surprised if I did not say a word in passing about the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital. I do not know who wants to close this hospital. We had 142 signatures from all parts of the House on our early-day motion. The annual conference of the Labour Party said that the hospital was not to be closed. The Labour women's annual conference said that it was not to be closed. That should be a formidable enough argument for my hon. Friend. Petitions have been signed by thousands and not just women because a number of men are glad that their wives are receiving the attention that they want, where they want it.
This brings me back to my earlier point about the allocation of resources. Here we are getting to the heart of the subject. We are not simply saying that the National Health Service should have more money. We are trying to work out how best to make use of the available money. One of the problems about a special hospital such as the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson is that it is difficult for the local area health authority, and for the region, to take the whole cost of such an establishment on board.
Putting the argument at its lowest, we are asking the members of these committees to say that they will go short on something that is badly needed, such as a health centre in Somers Town, because we must look after these women from all over the country. I maintain that people should not be put in that position. About 73 per cent. of the patients at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital come from outside the region. Many people in the regional authority feel ambivalent about the homoeopathic hospital because people who come from other parts of the country attend it.
We are experiencing a useless statistical reallocation of resources. I cannot understand why a scheme cannot be worked out for the payment of a capitation fee or a national funding so that

health committtees do not have to be so parochial about looking after people from somewhere else.
That is often done in the social services. Capitation fees are paid if a child in care is thought to be better in the country than in the town, for example. I am sure that in that monument at the Elephant and Castle one person could think up how to spread the funding. That is what I should call reallocation of resources. We must put the money where the patient is and not where he is supposed to live. Money should be spent where the patient is being treated, where he has been knocked down on the road or where a specialist hospital exists to treat him.
The Minister will be surprised that I thank him for setting up the working party on the EGA. I accept that there are many difficult arguments. My hon. Friends have done so well that I shall not go over the ground again. In the talks that we have had the Secretary of State has stressed that he is following the decision of his predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle). That is arguable. My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn said that EGA should be moved as an identifiable unit within the region. I feel that that proposition has now been dropped.
The Secretary of State says that he is interested in his predecessors. My filing is so good that I still possess a letter from one of the best Health Ministers that we ever had—Kenneth Robinson. The letter is dated 10 April 1967. It is headed"Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital"and states:
 There are no proposals to discontinue the services provided by this hospital.
One precedent is as good as another. I do not see why the present Secretary of State should choose one precedent rather than another.
I agree with what the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) said about reorganisation. It was the kingdom-building of the late dearly beloved Dick Cross-man that started things going wrong with the National Health Service. He had ideas of bigness and followed the concept of enormity and power. That broke up the old Departments. The system has


never worked since. I say that in a non-political sense. I have lived with the National Health Service at home as well as at work and I have been conscious of how wrong that concept went.
The idea of bringing the Departments of Health and Social Security together was good in theory. That is why it appealed to the donnish minds of those involved. But it would have made more sense to bring them together at the local level. Our constituents still have to attend separate offices. For them, the two are totally separate. After the little local difficulty that we are expecting in October I hope that some thought will be given to this matter.
In the Adjournment debate on 16 May 1975 I suggested that we should examine ways of funding the EGA and other specialist hospitals instead of taking the money out of local resources to pay for services which cannot be regarded as local.
My hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North referred to the apparent contradiction in the plans to declare the EGA and the homoeopathic hospital"surplus to requirements ", at the same time as establishing between 100 and 150 new beds at the University College hospital. I appreciate that teaching hospitals have special requirements, but it does not make much sense to the people whose houses must be pulled down to make way for an extension, when they can see the possibility of the EGA being simultaneously taken from them. Too little thought is given to the impact that plans have upon people, for whom the National Health Service exists.

Mr. Moyle: I can reassure my hon. Friend. The region has decided that 100 beds will not be established at University College hospital,

Mrs. Jeger: I am grateful to the Minister. His intervention proves the usefulness of the debate, because it would have taken 100 years for the Department to have written me a letter to that effect.
We should not knock the National Health Service so much. We have all had experiences with our families, friends and relations of the marvellous work being done in the NHS. If ever I have to be ill—which I am sure is not likely—

I would rather be ill in this country than anywhere else in the world.

7.27 p.m.

Mr. Robert Boscawen: The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mrs. Jeger) spoke with her usual self-effacing humility about her services in the Voluntary Aid Detachment during the war. I do not regard that as a mean or humble occupation. She has my deepest respect for that service.
The hon. Lady and others have made a powerful case for retaining the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital. I have signed her motion about this matter and I have received many letters in support of her case. I am pleased that the case for retaining the hospital has been put in such a clear and powerful way tonight. I hope that the Minister will pay attention to it.
Hon. Members have done well to be chosen first in the ballot for the debate on such a burning issue as this. Whenever my hon. Friends have tried to raise such a burning issue on the Consolidated Fund it has been debated in the early hours of the morning.
The charge that the nursing profession has laid against society is serious. Society must pay heed to it. Miss Catherine Hall summed it in a speech in February. She said:
 The pay of nurses has never reflected their vital contribution to the Health Service. In 1979 they can justly be described as the most exploited group of professional workers, not only in the Health Service but within the country.
That is a moderate way of putting a serious charge against all of us in the House and against the public generally. We are not treating this vital profession in the way that it should be treated. On all counts a case has been made for a substantial increase in nurses' pay. A number of hon. Members have mentioned comparability with other professions, and on that ground nurses' pay simply does not reflect reality.
In the Nursing Standard I see that a comparison has been made with primary teachers. On that comparison their pay does not reflect reality. I am sure that the figures have been checked, and some hon. Members have said that on average the difference is about £32 per week less for an SRN in 1978 compared with the pay of a primary school teacher. The


nurses have a lot in common with primary school teachers and it is a good comparison. The nurses, like primary school teachers, must have dedication, skill and the ability to accept considerable responsibility. Nurses and primary school teachers work in difficult conditions. Therefore, on that comparison, the nurses' pay does not reflect reality.
As to the shortage of nurses coming into training, I agree with the hon. Member for East Kilbride (Dr. Miller) that when attracting individuals into skill training pay is not everything. But it makes no sense, when the number coming into training is falling at such a rate, not to regard pay as one of the major factors. Again, I quote from the Nursing Standard:
 In the period April 1977 to March 1978 the number of learners entering nurse training fell by 21·45 per cent.
In certain specialties of nurse training the effect on waiting lists has been very serious. I have often cited the appalling orthopaedic waiting lists in the Wiltshire area health authority, which covers part of my constituency, for people hoping to have operations. On that count, too, nurses' pay is in need of substantial jacking up.
Next, I come to what I shall call the"X"factors, if one can use the analogy of Service pay. I shall be repeating what a number of hon. Members have already said. The risks to health in the Service are high. Training is long and hours and conditions are difficult, particularly in such specialties as psychiatric nursing. Therefore, on the ground of the"X"factors, too, nursing service pay is in need of considerable jacking up.
We then have the most important and current"X"factor, which is the voluntary no-strike agreement which the nurses have recently declared so firmly, and to which the vast majority of them have always held. That also must be taken into account.
I congratulate those members of the nursing service who have taken no action and who have withstood the industrial action of their unions in the recent disputes. There are a number of hospital workers in my area who have adopted a low profile in the industrial action during recent weeks. All that concerns them is the patients. We regard their attitude as extremely valuable.
So on all those counts the head of steam building up on this issue is powerful and important, and society must take account of it.
Finally, there is the question of morale. If the NHS is employing 1 million people, and their morale is so affected by the level of reward which they receive for their work, that must have a major effect on the standard of service given to the nation. That is a very powerful and critical issue.
Morale in the Service has not been good for a number of years for many reasons. I shall not rehearse all of them, but there has been far too much politics in the Health Service in recent years and that contributed to the earlier strikes and disputes. The problem of the separation of private treatment and NHS treatment affected morale. But I am not speaking of that. I am speaking about the low morale which exists generally because of a lack of resources being given to the NHS in terms of pay and conditions.
I am critical of the Department in that this situation has been a long time coming. Nurses have not suddenly become short of adequate rewards. From the way that things are going, I suspect that it will last a long time yet. There has not been sufficient urgency in past months—if not years—to try to find a better basis for establishing a system of paying nurses more in accord with what they give to society.
I do not believe that the Department has given as good a lead on this issue as we have a right to expect.

Mr. Moyle: Just before the hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Boscawen) leaves his point about pay, may I say that I think that there has been a welcome onset of responsibility among Opposition Members during the debate. The hon. Gentleman's Front Bench colleagues are always calling for a reduction of public expenditure, and he is calling for an increase in nurses' pay. No doubt he will have thought of where the money is coming from. His hon. Friends the Members for Hampstead (Mr. Finsberg), Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) and Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) have all said that they will take money away from industry, with the consequent impact on employment, in order to pay for it. I should like to know


whether the hon. Gentleman joins them in advocating that.

Mr. Boscawen: If the right hon. Gentleman had waited half a second more, he would have realised that the rest of what I wanted to say deals with that matter. I was about to say where the money was to come from.
In the past 30 years society has wanted this ideal of a free Health Service—a service that is free at the point of use—yet it has given little considered thought to the best way of funding it. I remind the Minister of State that at the beginning it was said, rather airily, that in a few years it would pay for itself by cutting down the cost of ill health and the cost arising from people being away from work. It was thought that by improving the health of the nation the Health Service would automatically pay for itself. In practice, that has not happened. The Health Service may have improved the nation's health, but in real financial terms it has not paid for itself. In fact, very much the opposite is the case.
The funding of the Health Service has been ad hoc all the way through. It has been funded out of hand-to-mouth grants from central taxation, and latterly it has been funded out of inflation. Until cash limits were imposed on the NHS system, in reality it was being funded out of the public sector borrowing requirement, which, as we all know, is a major cause of the gradual devaluation of our currency.
So far no one has been able to find a solution to the problem of how to direct more wealth into the resources of the Health Service without raising taxes very much higher than they are or without substantially depriving other forms of Government expenditure of funds. I entirely agree that the resources in the Health Service today must be put to their best use. Many hon. Members have made suggestions in this regard, and what they have said is one way that must be looked at.
Nevertheless, we must consider how we can get a more regular basis of putting money into this service without doing so through extra ad hoc grants that are given every so often when pay goes up or when there is a vast demand for more money to be given to psychiatric hospitals

and so on. We should think more about whether the insurance principle in the national insurance fund has some merit which may be used partially for funding the NHS.
I know that the Treasury boys will have nothing to say in support of"hypothecated revenue ", as they call it. I know that they do not want certain percentages of income or other taxes actually hypothecated directly to any particular service. I appreciate that argument and that it is never likely to happen because the Treasury is against it. Nevertheless, in our social security provisions, particularly in our retirement provisions, we have hypothecated revenue. In other words, people purchase their ticket for their retirement by weekly contributions out of their income. I believe that there is a case for looking at a partial funding of the NHS through a national insurance fund system.
I do not believe that we have given this nearly enough thought. At the present time 6½ per cent. of every working individual's income up to a top rate goes into purchasing his retirement benefit. I shall not advance any percentage figure that we should ask of individuals in order to establish a national insurance fund that would be hypothecated to the NHS. Since this would be tied to increased earnings, to a certain extent, it could provide the increases in the cost of wages in the NHS. And since wages in the NHS are a substantial part of the cost of that Service, because it is such a labour-intensive industry, it could be used to get over some of the problem of never having enough money at the right time to pay reasonable wages or salaries to those who work in the NHS.
I put that suggestion forward for consideration. There are many other ways of doing this. The Minister will remind me that the Conservatives want to cut taxation. Yes, we do.

Mr. Moyle: That is not the point that I wanted to put to the hon. Gentleman. Perhaps he can tell the House what would happen if the individual runs out of insurance benefits.

Mr. Boscawen: I am suggesting that the individual cannot run out of Health Service benefit, if that is what the right hon. Gentleman means. I am suggesting


that the insurance fund should provide the wages that are payable in the NHS. Of course, some individuals will require a great deal more of the Service than others. In that sense, the scheme that I have suggested can never be purely equitable, because different individuals will never get back the same amount, just as they do not from their contributions towards the retirement pension. Nor, of course, if one contributes to a privately-funded health scheme, does the fitter individual benefit to anything like the same extent as the individual with a lot of health problems. Therefore, I do not believe that this will be quite the hurdle that the right hon. Gentleman may think. It would not be equitable in respect of what different individuals get back, but it would at least be equitable in guaranteeing a growing amount of money to finance the wages of the NHS.
Of course, this need not increase the total take from the individual in the form of tax plus contributions, but it will not be seen as tax in the same way as now. If taxation is to be reduced, as I believe it must if we are to produce more wealth and resources generally in the country, that would have to be balanced against cuts in other forms of Government expenditure. Other countries have experimented with different forms of insurance schemes. I have not introduced the element of the private insurance schemes, because although there is a place for them I do not believe that they can ever be of such a substantial size as to replace the vast sums of money that are needed in the NHS.
Some new thinking is required with regard to the funding of the NHS, instead of falling back every time to raising the resources from central Government taxation. Otherwise, with all the other demands on central Government, the pay of NHS employees will for ever be squeezed. As a result, we shall never be able to pay them a wage that is comparable with people outside, which is what they deserve.
I hope that there will be a continuing debate, especially when the Royal Commission on the NHS reports, into more sensible ways of finding this vast sum of money to run the ideal that people want, which is a Health Service free at the point of use.

7.50 p.m.

Dr. M. S. Miller: My hon. Friends the Members for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton), Brent, South (Mr. Pavitt) and Holborn and St. Pan-eras, South (Mrs. Jeger) have eloquently put the case for the nurses. I join in the tribute to them for the arduous, dedicated, onerous, difficult and extremely skilled job that they do. As I said in an intervention, the Government must lose the Victorian outlook which still applies to some extent in the nursing profession. Nurses are professionals. They are not the gifted amateurs or semi-amateurs that they were in the past. As my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South pointed out, they are now much better educated. We should examine their career structure, not merely from the money aspect but from the point of view that their better education makes them much less likely to accept the old patronising system which applied in the past. Not only doctors but even some senior members of the nursing staff took that attitude towards junior nurses. Those nurses who are old enough to remember the days before the National Health Service will know what I mean. A relic of that system remains even to this day.
As my hon. Friends have indicated, fine words are not enough. It is not sufficient to pay tribute to the nurses and leave it at that. They need more money. The hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Boscawen) indicated that I had said that money was not everything. I was trying to point out that, although there are more nurses than ever before in the National Health Service, more skills are now required of nurses. In every country in the world, there is a lack of skilled people in all grades. The nursing profession is no exception. It does not necessarily follow, although it would be a fillip, that increased salaries would bring an immediate rush to join that profession. The problem is obtaining skilled people. My right hon. Friends, however, have no option but to give the nurses a much fairer deal than they are getting. I hope that my right hon. Friend and his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will take this to heart and settle the argument with the nursing profession forthwith.
The Health Service needs more money. The technological advances alone which are being developed fast and furiously in


medicine are extremely costly procedures. There is an open-ended commitment due to ever-increasing expectations by the public. That is not a bad development. The public expect and are getting more from the medical, nursing and ancillary professions, and from hospitals and doctors. This is tremendously costly.
Some Tory Members have said that they believe there should be cash limits, albeit cash limits which are higher than at the moment. I have given a good deal of thought to the cost of the Health Service. I have concluded that this is one area where there cannot be cash limits. If there are to be limits, they would have to be extremely high. They would have to be flexible. I do not believe that a ceiling can be put on health. A price cannot be put on good health or on the cost of trying to obtain good health.
I do not agree with those who talk about the Socialist concept and principles of the Health Service being responsible for what are considered the ills of the the Health Service and that the whole matter should be left to free enterprise. That reminds me of the astronaut who was asked after he had been to the moon what he was thinking about as he waited to be shot into space. He replied that his only thought was that all the instruments in front of him on which his life depended had been installed as a result of the lowest tender. I would hate to think that the Health Service was run in that way.
Most of the carping against the Health Service comes from those who are lukewarm about accepting the basic principles of the Service. I am not saying that they object to it. But they did not approve of the principles in the first instance and retain even now some objections to the way it is funded. They believe it should be organised on a free enterprise basis and gull some of the public into the same state of mind. Let me say this. The private sector in medicine exists only because it is underpinned by the Health Service. I was speaking recently to a doctor who had been asked to take part in discussions about renovating a building and turning it into a private hospital. When the project had been costed, the conclusion was that the patient would have to be charged £90 a day before he or she even paid for the cost

of an aspirin, let alone any intensive medical or surgical care. The basic cost would be over £600 a week. A person going into a private hospital of that kind, undergoing intensive care for four weeks, or having a serious operation, could run up a bill of £5,000 or £6,000 without difficulty. If any hon. Member can tell me that many people in this country, or in most countries, could privately fund that situation, I would be extremely surprised. Private practice exists only because the Health Service is there to prop it up.
My right hon. Friend will be pleased to know that I do not intend to say anything about the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital. I do, however, intend to say something about a hospital to which many of my constituents are taken and about which I have had some correspondence in recent months, although it is not actually situated in my constituency. I hope that my right hon. Friend will take note of my comments about Stonehouse hospital and convey them to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, the hon. Member for Stirling, Falkirk and Grangemouth (Mr. Ewing).
I gather from the correspondence that I have had with the hospital board that there have been problems resulting mainly from the fact that it has been difficult to obtain anaesthetists. I am pleased to see that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State has entered the Chamber. I am glad that he is present to hear about the problems of Stonehouse hospital.
It may be that the hospital now has anaesthetists. A considerable amount of pressure was put on the board. However, there is a fear that the hospital will close down in the near future. My right hon. Friend knows that I do not take the view that every cottage hospital is of the best. I take the view that if I were ill and taken to hospital, I should like to be in a hospital where the surgeons, physicians and everyone else was there after having faced strong competition and consequently were of the highest possible calibre, and not well-meaning doctors, practising in some of the smaller hospitals. I do not say that Stonehouse hospital is in that category.
Although big is not beautiful, a hospital has to be of a certain size. It has to have a certain catchment area if one is to be


assured that the doctors who practise in it are of a high calibre. I think that the hon. Member for Reading, South (Dr. Vaughan) will agree with that as a general principle. The cottage hospital and the small hospital dealing with run-of-the-mill matters is all very well, but such hospitals do not necessarily comply with what is needed in the latter part of the twentieth century and as we move into the twenty-first century.

Dr. Vaughan: There seems to be a general view in other countries as well as in Britain that if a hospital has more than about 400 beds, or if it tries to serve a population of more than 300,000 to 500,000, communications within the hospital start to break down. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman agrees that there should be hospitals with a larger number of beds. However, we cannot have hospitals with a large number of beds without paying the price in terms of comunications within the hospitals.

Dr. Miller: A similar argument applies to huge comprehensive schools. We no longer build 2,000-pupil comprehensive schools. We are now building schools for half that number. It is the same with hospitals. I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman. A 500-bed hospital for a population of 300,000 or 400,000 in a catchment area is excellent. There are problems if the hospital and the catchment area are larger. In Glasgow, for example, I do not think that we need more than one hospital for children. The children's hospital serves for a much greater catchment area than the city of Glasgow.
I ask for an assurance from my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State that Stonehouse hospital is not at risk and that a close watch will be kept on it from the point of view of ensuring that those in its area have a hospital. At present, they have a good hospital. I know that there are plans for another hospital in a wider area—

The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Harry Ewing): I apologise to the House for intervening. I had a meeting with the Lanarkshire health board on Monday of this week. After the meeting there was a press conference, during which the assurance was given that there was no question of Stonehouse hospital

closing. We announced that the health board had had a number of applications to fill the anaesthetists' posts and that the applications would ensure that the hospital returned to full service.

Dr. Miller: I am glad to have that assurance.
I conclude by again referring to the cost of the Health Service. My hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mrs. Jeger) poured scorn on those who felt that raising extra money for the Health Service depended on private injections of finance. The hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Finsberg), for whom I have a high regard, suggested the taking of funds from the National Enterprise Board. I imagine that nothing would be less likely to raise the extra money that is required than either of those methods.
I confirm what my hon. Friend said about the drug bill. It is enormous. It is 50 per cent. higher than the total cost of the family practitioner service within the Health Service. We should consider again the possibility of nationalisation. There should be a national enterprise running the production of drugs. That would save an enormous amount of money.
One of the great problems faced by the Health Service was reorganisation. I do not say that the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) meant it to be a disaster, but it turned out to be a difficulty. I know that my right hon. and hon. Friends have been accused of not doing something to alleviate the difficulty when the Labour Government took over in 1974. When we have had the little hiccup that my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South talked about coming in October, it may be that we should consider the structure of the Service and whether it can be streamlined and made much more cost effective.
I repeat that I would be chary of putting a cash limit on what we spend on the Health Service. At present Britain is quite a long way down the scale of expenditure per head of population on health. That statement takes into account what we can afford to spend. We can afford to spend more per head of population than we are spending.
The Health Service should be looked upon for what it is—a service for the


benefit of patients. It has not been instituted for anyone else. As well as constructively criticising what we find wrong with it, we should give credit where credit is due. That applies not only to the architects of the Service but to all those who work within it.

8.8 p.m.

Mrs. Margaret Bain: I follow the pattern set by other hon. Members. My speech will fall broadly into two categories. The first will take in the problem of nurses' pay—the current dispute—and the second will include some general matters of concern about the National Health Service in my area of the West of Scotland.
I hope that both Front Benches have noted that the speeches made by hon. Members on both sides of the House have attempted to reflect the anger and frustration over nurses' pay. I hope that both Front Benches have taken on board that it is necessary to take steps to ensure that appropriate machinery is established to prevent a pay dispute arising again as well as solving the immediate problem. That point of view has been advanced by many hon. Members in motions on the Order Paper as well as in speeches today. I hope that we shall hear from both Front Benches any ideas that they have for machinery that will prevent such a difficult situation from arising again.
One of the major problems that we are facing is the long-term confidence of nurses in their negotiating machinery. They are concerned about the future well-being of the nursing profession. I have a letter from a nursing sister at the Glasgow Royal infirmary. She writes that she is witnessing highly qualified nurses either going abroad or leaving the profession in increasing numbers. We must ensure that we provide some method of guaranteeing nurses the form of negotiation that will make it unnecessary for them to bring to bear in Parliament the sort of pressure that they have brought to bear in the past few weeks.
Earlier in the debate the Secretary of State said that nurses had earned the total respect of the community by not taking industrial action. But respect is not in short supply, and nurses want to earn more money. It is a gross insult to those highly trained and dedicated indivi-

duals that they have not even received the 5 per cent. that was promised in 1978 under phase 3. That was a small sum of money and would have made such a difference to them.
Comparisons have been drawn with other professions and types of work. The hon. Members for Brent, North (Dr. Boyson) and for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) went into great detail. I should like to take up the comparison with primary teachers. In Scotland teachers are threatening strike action over their pay claim. They, too, want to be restored to the position in 1974. It has been indicated to myself and other hon. Members by the Education Institute of Scotland that according to the DHSS definitions 7,000 teachers are on or below the poverty line. I have asked the Secretary of State for Scotland for clarification, but if such a large number of teachers are on or below the poverty line, how many more nurses must be in that situation? Can the Department tell us how nurses' salaries relate to the poverty line?
I have come from the teaching profession and know something about teachers' salaries, but like others, I have perhaps not paid such great attention to salaries in other forms of employment. I was therefore horrified to hear what was said by a constituent who works at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary as a nursing officer with 25 years' experience. She is responsible for more than 50 members of staff and three wards. Twice a week she controls the whole infirmary, both staff and patients. Her take-home pay is £62 a week, which is a small reward for that responsibility and all those years of dedication, and, as the hon. Member for East Kilbride (Dr. Miller) said, the work of the nursing profession is becoming increasingly complex. I hope that the Government will make a positive statement towards solving the nurses' wages dispute.
I should like to refer specifically to the Baird Street clinic in Glasgow. Over the past two or three months there have been worrying reports in the press that it has lost two of its main consultants. That clinic is a centre for rheumatic diseases in the West of Scotland, where they frequently occur, as they do throughout Scotland. The consultants are leaving because they are disillusioned with the Health Service. Their research work and


the level of their experience in the treatment of rheumatic diseases has been lost not only to Scotland but to the United Kingdom. Are there plans to ensure that they will be replaced by equally experienced men, and is there any possibility of extra resources for the Baird Street clinic to enable it to expand its research facilities? 
Again on the West of Scotland, I should like to know whether the Tinbury report is to be published soon. It has been awaited for some time. I have met Mr. Tinbury at Gartnavel hospital and his interest in the care of geriatric and psychogeriatric patients is beyond doubt. It would be a most useful report to have available in the House and would facilitate decisions on expenditure for facilities in the West of Scotland.
There is increasing concern that such facilities do not meet the demand. I should like to see more care within the community, and sheltered housing facilities, but the number of day-care and long-term places is far short of the requirement. The care of senile, demented persons can cause great distress to families.
More generally, there is the problem of dentists withdrawing from the National Health Service. Over a year ago I was assured that the dental service would be examined. I received a letter today from a constituent in Dullatur in my area near Cumbernauld saying that his dentist has withdrawn from the National Health Service. Dentists do not want to take on extra patients because of rising costs, and I should like to know what consideration the Department has given to dental services.
There is a problem with the escalation of NUPE action in Scotland. In today's press it is said that 50 hospitals in the Glasgow and Lanarkshire areas will be severely affected. Most of these hospitals have only enough linen to last a few days, and some are already restricting admissions. It will be useful to have a statement from the Scottish Office on contingency action to alleviate the hardship suffered as a result of NUPE action.
There is a general loss of confidence about the efficiency of the Health Service. As the hon. Member for East Kilbride said, the public have high expectations of the Health Service but do not appreciate the costs involved; for example,

that a week in hospital costs £600, before taking account of drugs. In the Sunday newspapers in Scotland last week there were headlines about committees of people deciding who lives and dies in hospital. A statement by the Scottish Office or DHSS is needed on that. It is totally undermining confidence in the Health Service.
Unlike the Minister, the Under-Secretary has not been bouncing up and down and asking where I propose to get the money from to make the Health Service work effectively and pay the nurses. My party does not support cuts in public expenditure. We would cut defence expenditure, leave aside massive prestige programmes such as Concorde and demonstrate a new sense of priorities within the limited resources available. The services for the welfare of the community, such as health and education. are vital. We claim to be a caring society. As politicians, we must decide the priorities and gain the respect of the community outside this House by demonstrating that we understand the problems.

8.20 p.m.

Mr. Allen McKay: I do not intend to keep the House for long because others have made my points already. All the facts and figures about the nurses' claim have been put, and there is a great deal of sympathy for that claim.
The National Health Service is the jewel in the crown of Socialism, but at present it appears that the lustre of the jewel has gone. I do not think that people have lost confidence in the Service, but they are worried that it is losing the edge that it had when it was first set up by Nye Bevan.
My constituency is an area of concern as it is somewhat deprived of facilities and money. The regional organiser of the Trent regional health authority wrote to me and said:
 You will be aware that the Trent region as a whole is a deprived region in health terms, and is indeed currently funded at only 88 per cent. of the national target funding level. Whilst the implementation of the recommendations of the Department's Resource Allocation Working Party gives the Trent region a growth rate of approximately twice that of the national growth rate, it still means that the region will not achieve equalisation to the national target until after 1990.


Obviously we must look at this. If we have to wait until the 1990s to achieve equalisation, ours is indeed a deprived area.
The Government should also look closely at the standby arrangements. There is no single system of standby arrangements, and individual practitioners are responsible for visiting their patients at nights and at weekends as may be necessary. However, they may arrange for another doctor to deputise for them. A commercial deputising service is used for this purpose, and it has fallen down on many occasions. I have many letters on my files from people who have had to wait two or three hours for a doctor, and this has caused great anxiety, not only to patients but to those who have been ringing round trying to get help. There are occasions when the doctor comes from outside the district and gets lost. If we must have a deputising service, let it be a nationalised one, run on a proper basis and with an efficient career structure.
Another area of concern is that of the ambulance service drivers, who are seeking parity with the police and the fire service. There is merit in their claim. No doubt the Minister will say that a comparability study is being made and that ambulance drivers spend only 10 per cent. of their time working on emergencies. Perhaps he would care to look at the police and the fire service and see how long they spend on emergency cases. I think that there is comparability.
There is sympathy on both sides of the House for the nurses' pay claim, just as there is outside. One has only to look at the television ratings to see that programmes involving hospitals and nurses get very high ratings. That is not just because these programmes are good entertainment value, but because nurses and hospitals are close to people's hearts. Therefore there is a great deal of public sympathy for the nurses' pay claim.
It could be argued that if the nurses' claim was met there would be pressure from others with claims. But which trade union would dare to oppose the nurses' claim? My union—the National Union of Mineworkers—would be the first to come forward and say that the nurses should be paid and that it would not use

their claim as a leapfrogging exercise. The Yorkshire miners' leader, Mr. Arthur Scargill, has gone on record as wholeheartedly supporting the nurses' claim. In the mining industry we know the value of nurses. We call them angels with dirty faces because that is how we see them. But their faces are welcome—not only underground when there are accidents, but in the hospitals as well.
One might ask where the money will come from to meet the pay claim. If we have to ask ourselves that question, we should look carefully at our priorities. In local government a good treasurer has a contingency fund which he draws upon, and if he gets into trouble with that, there is a slippage fund which somehow manages to find money for unexpected things. I urge the Minister to ask the Treasury for the money. I am sure that it could be found and that we could pay the nurses what they deserve.

8.27 p.m.

Mr. Peter Brooke: I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Penistone (Mr. McKay). I refer, as he did, to the popularity of and enthusiasm for television programmes about nurses.
I must apologise to the House for being absent for half an hour, but in doing so I pay a compliment to the House and this debate. I was due to attend a constituency occasion elsewhere in the Palace at half-past six, but so engrossing was the debate that I remained until I was reminded that I was supposed to be elsewhere.
This is primarily a nursing debate. My mother and sister trained as nurses. Before her marriage my sister ended her service as sister in one of the great London hospitals. I have no interest to declare as those events are retrospective. However, they add to my knowledge and understanding of the profession.
I live in Ashley Gardens, next to one of the Westminster hospital nurses' homes. Other hon. Members who live in Ashley Gardens, Vincent Square or Rochester Row will be familiar with nurses coming and going at hours that are as anti-social as those that we keep.
Last Friday the BBC did a profile of a senior staff nurse. She came from St. Bartholomew's hospital, which is at the


other end of my constituency. I do not know how many hon. Members listened to that programme. In 20 minutes the BBC conveyed to an even greater degree than the other television programmes, novels or films the enormous sense of service and dedication that underlines the nursing profession.
In my early days as a Member of Parliament I was invited to spend 24 hours in St. Bartholomew's hospital to see a complete cycle of a day in the life of a hospital. I saw everything that happened in that period. From that experience I derived a vivid sense of the service that the nursing profession provides.
I received the documentation from the unions involved, including the Royal College of Nursing and COHSE. I was slightly surprised to be addressed as"Dear colleague"by the general secretary of COHSE. I do not know whether other hon. Members have had that experience.
This is a debate on nursing, and also on the hospital service in general. I refer to the code of conduct to which tribute was rightly paid. I shall not enter into the reasons why the code of conduct was not prepared in advance of the disturbances in the earlier part of this year. I regret the attitude of Mr. Morris, at the Westminster hospital, towards it. He recently acquired a certain notoriety. Mr. Morris and I have an easy collaboration within my constituency when he wishes me to raise constituency cases. When the code was issued he said that he had not seen it, that he would pay no attention to it until he had done so, and that he imagined it would be some days yet before he received it. When I reflect that in the days of Nelson it was possible to send a message by signal between Portsmouth and the Admiralty or vice versa within five minutes, it is a reflection on modern trade union communications that the time factor could intervene in the way that it did in this case.
I thought that Mr. Morris's remarks were sadder still as a comment upon the degree of compassion inherent in some parts of the Health Service. They seemed to compare unfavourably with the attitudes that the nurses' profession has shown, implicitly and explicitly, not only in unhesitatingly covering in recent

months the gaps in care that have arisen as a result of these disturbances, but also for the manner in which they advanced their case. That manner and the nurses' unstinting traditions of service put the Government and the House under a peculiar obligation to make certain that nurses are justly and generously treated.
The hon. Member for East Kilbride (Dr. Miller) accused my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead (Mr. Finsberg) of climbing on a bandwagon. I think that behaviour such as challenging the motivation of hon. Members is unworthy.
Geography requires me, as a parliamentary neighbour, to refer to the Camden hospitals issue. I was born and grew up in Camden-Hampstead. Before entering the House I lived my married life in Camden-St. Pancras, North. I had the privilege of serving on the Camden borough council with my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead. I greatly enjoy the collaboration which I have with the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mrs. Jeger) on matters relating to Covent Garden, which is divided by the boundary between our two constituencies. I was happy to put my name on early-day motion No. 4 with theirs in respect of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital. I admire the way in which they fought the campaign on behalf of that hospital.
St. Columba's hospital, for reasons of family and long residence near Hampstead Heath, means a great deal to me. My hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead can count on me as an ally in the battle for that hospital. I regret, however, that he did not warn me that he intended to attack the Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster area health authority. I am the only Member from the area covered by that area health authority who has been seeking to speak in this debate. There may have been things which could or should have been said in the debate by a local Member on behalf of the area health authority if one had known in advance that certain things were to be said.
I should like to say a word in sympathy with the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South concerning the Royal London Homoeopathic hospital. I share her concern that if a part of the Health Service is being run down at its heart, the body and limbs will subsequently wither, and wither away.
I have had the greatest misgivings about the way in which the Government are treating the academic staff—and particularly the junior academic staff—at our dental hospitals. If that section of our Health Service in the great teaching hospitals, or in the Royal Dental hospital in Leicester Square, in my constituency, becomes sour, that attitude will in due course infect the pupils, and that contagion will spread again in due course to the dental profession as a whole. On an evening when we are primarily concerned with the nurses, it is an embarrassment to me that that junior academic staff at the dental schools received only a 2 per cent. salary increase last year. But the principal thrust of the debate is related to the nurses and every Member who has spoken has referred to them, and referred to them glowingly.
I referred at the beginning of my speech to my mother and sister as having been nurses, and to the great teaching hospitals in my constituency. I close by quoting from a letter—perhaps it is a happy note on which to end this long but worthwhile debate—which I have received from one of my constituents. It is more telling perhaps than the printed documentation which we received by way of representation on this subject, however admirably the Royal College of Nursing set out the data. My constituent writes:
 I am a theatre sister of eight years' standing; because of this I am at the top of my salary scale. Combined with the fact that I have fairly low outgoings in the form of rent, travel expenses (I usually bicycle to work) and no financial family commitments, I am able to retain a reasonable standard of living. However, not unnaturally, most of my colleagues have one or more of these financial burdens to bear. Not surprisingly, it is very difficult to fill the staff nurse vacancies which occur, and because of this my area of work is suffering from a gross staff shortage. At the present rate staff are leaving it is a matter of weeks before theatres will be shut or operating sessions drastically cut, with all the ensuing consequences to the patient. There is also a very real danger of falling standards if staffing continues at such a low level, and of a high level of stress and frustration amongst staff.
Surely nurses as a professional body deserve some remunerative recognition and our just claims to this…government not dismissed. If we do not get a reasonable salary increase I fear the NHS will quickly become less functional, as despite the job satisfaction, more and more nurses will leave the profession to do unskilled jobs for a higher wage simply because they cannot make ends meet. Then, as a profession

we will sink to the level of the Sarah Gamp's of the nineteenth century.
Nothing in that letter seems to me to be avaricious or aggressive. The whole letter radiates that same concern which underlies all the traditions of the nursing service. I hope that the Government will respond to it.

8.39 p.m.

Mrs. Audrey Wise: It will be a pity if hon. Members seek to play off one section of those working in hospitals against another section, or to claim more compassion or higher moral standards for one section as against another. I have a great admiration for all who work in our hospitals. I think that they have all been facing a dilemma which is not of their making and which they should not face.
The central issue is not whether those working in the Health Service decide to take collective action but whether they even have to consider it. The hon. Member for City of London and Westminster, South (Mr. Brooke) read a letter which referred to the danger that faces the Health Service when nurses leave jobs or if the profession is not taken up. The same danger applies to the ancillary workers.
As long as the problem exists, it cannot be met by nurses or others deciding not to take collective action. If necessary it will be solved if enough nurses take individual action, but that is like a slow bleeding of the Health Service. I should not like the Health Service to suffer either a slow bleeding by individual withdrawal of labour or an immediate crisis by collective withdrawal of labour. Both are undesirable. It is not the workers who are at fault in either case. The fault lies in the situation that they face. They should not have to choose whether or not to take the decision. There should be no necessity for them to consider it.
I received a letter, dated 7 March, from the Coventry community health council. The waiting list for orthopaedic operations in Coventry numbers 1,500. Many cases have been waiting for well over 12 months and some for over two years. That is intolerable and it imposes a fearful burden upon the prospective patients and the nursing staff.
The Coventry and Warwickshire hospital is under-staffed and one ward has


been closed because of the staff shortage. The opportunity is being taken to up grade the ward, but that is not the reason for its closure. The reason is short age of staff through shortage of money. Headlines accompany a closure through industrial action but that is not the case when wards are closed because of the shortage of nurses or money. Those cases are more or less ignored by the press, but I believe that they are equally serious.
In Coventry and throughout the country only trauma cases are being treated in orthopaedic wards. No normal orthopaedic operations—cold orthopaedic operations—are taking place in Coventry. Last week I visited the orthopaedic wards in the Coventry and Warwickshire hospital. They were almost entirely filled with elderly patients, mainly elderly ladies in their eighties who were suffering from broken bones. They occupy those beds for a long time, partly because they are slower to heal and partly because there is nowhere to discharge them to when that would otherwise be possible. The wards are filled almost entirely with very elderly accident cases.
The few beds that are not occupied by patients in their eighties are occupied by other accident cases, particularly motor accident cases. That is why orthopaedic surgeons are keen that the House should pass the seat belts Bill when it comes before us shortly. It has been put to me strongly—and I agree—that prevention would be a great service to hospitals and surgeons. While the beds are occupied in the way that I have described, no normal orthopaedic operations are taking place.
One aspect of this matter is particularly relevant to the question of nurses' pay. It is an irony that nurses dealing with geriatric patients get a plusage, but the yardstick for deciding whether a nurse is entitled to that plusage is whether the patients are under the care of a geriatrician. In the orthopaedic wards that I visited, which were filled with elderly ladies aged between 75 and 92, no plus-age was paid to the nurses because the patients were under the supervision of orthopaedic surgeons rather than geriatricians.
If it is difficult to nurse geriatric patients, and nurses need a plusage for

doing that work. They should certainly not be deprived of it when the geriatric patients have broken bones. I suggest that it is even harder to nurse an elderly lady with broken bones than it is to nurse a lady of the same age who has no broken bones. I urge the Minister of State to consider changing the yardstick for determining whether a plusage is paid, so that it relates to the average age of patients in a ward rather than to the consultant who is supervising the patients.
We have solved many more complicated problems. It would be administratively simple to check the normal ward occupancy and decide that nurses working in an orthopaedic ward with elderly patients, who are geriatric as well as orthopaedic, should receive the plusage. I urge the Minister to bring that suggestion to the attention of anyone dealing with nurses' pay. It is an anomaly which needs to be corrected. I should add that the Coventry community health council and the orthopaedic surgeons concerned share my views.
We have to grapple with the fact that it is inescapable that there must be proper remuneration in the NHS. It is scandalous and intolerable that nurses are among those receiving less than average earnings. It is equally intolerable that ancillary workers who carry out essential and often unpleasant work should be in a similar position.
The Government should remember that one of their first actions in 1974 was to redress some of the grievances of the nursing profession. Substantial increases about which we could boast were paid at that time, and I urge that the same spirit should imbue the DHSS now. I am sure that if that means a battle with the Treasury my right hon. Friend will receive the support of these Benches. I hope that he will receive support also from the Benches opposite. I say that even though I am conscious that the loudest cry from those Benches is to cut public expenditure, and cutting public expenditure as a general slogan is not compatible with another slogan of paying people in the public services the wages and salaries to which they are rightfully entitled.
If my hon. Friend has his battle with the Treasury, he will certainly receive wholehearted support from these Benches. If this battle is not fought and won the


Health Service will be eroded whether or not nurses or other staff decide to take industrial action. I have every sympathy with those who take the one decision and with those who take the other. I know how I would feel if I were placed in their shoes. I simply would not know how to balance the needs of my own family against the needs of the patients who have to be served. It is an intolerable decision to have to make, and the only people who can save them this additional burden are the Government, supported by this House.
I am glad that this debate has taken place. I endorse everything that has been said by other hon. Members about the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital and the Royal London Homoeopathic hospital. I shall not repeat the arguments because the cases were made absolutely splendidly. I deplore any suggestion that there is any hospital which is surplus to requirements. There might be areas with greater needs than others, but I deny absolutely that there are anywhere medical services that are surplus to requirements. That phrase ought to be censored from all communications in future.
The hon. Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale), who called for a change of Government so that these problems could be solved, was gravely mistaken. I believe that a change of Government to one pledged to cut public expenditure could only add disaster to our present distress, but it is up to the Government and to my right hon. Friend on the Front Bench to prove us right in expressing those words. We shall support him, but he must win this battle with the Treasury and nurses and hospital ancillary staff must get the salaries which they deserve.

8.53 p.m.

Dr. Gerard Vaughan: I can tell the hon. Member for Coventry, South-West (Mrs. Wise) that she has no right to imply that we wish to cut the resources available to the National Health Service. Quite the opposite. We wish to see a vital and effective National Health Service, able to deliver care at the time of need to everybody in this country. To imply that in some way we would start to cut it and deprive people of services is a total smear and an untruth. Early in the

debate the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) referred to the absence from those speaking of my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles). Quite clearly, the hon. Gentleman had overlooked the procedure of the House in this debate which means that had my hon. and gallant Friend spoken on this subject, he could not have spoken again later in the debate on his own subject. I hope, therefore, that the hon. Member will withdraw that assertion.
Although, for obvious reasons the numbers in the House are now distinctly depleted, I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for City of London and Westminster, South (Mr. Brooke) that this has been a most worthwhile and useful debate. It is very tempting to follow him into mentioning our various medical contacts. I shall resist that. But, of course, he is right. The nurse is the most essential person in the medical team and in the care of patients.
I was pleased when the hon. Member for Fife, Central opened the debate by referring to the deplorable pay problems in the nursing profession. We value our nurses, for all the reasons set out by the hon. Member for Brent, South (Mr. Pavitt). They are dedicated and hard working, particularly at this time of industrial strife. This we recognise. We recognise, too, their appalling salary scale in comparison with the salary scale of teachers and secretaries and many other careers which are open to women. The Opposition recognise that there is no doubt that the nurses are a special case and should be treated as such.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) said that nurses came within the same category as the police, the firemen and the members of other services which look after our essential needs, and I agree with him. For this reason, they must be paid adequately so that their confidence is restored in the Service for which they work.
From the Opposition side of the Chamber I say to the nurses"We understand your situation over pay, we deeply sympathise with you and we welcome your undertaking not to strike. It is also our view that, if we expect you not to strike we—society—have a responsibility to see that your living standards and your pay


levels are reasonable, and that your confidence is restored by the institution of adequate machinery which will respond quickly, if necessary, to your needs." That point was made by the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mrs. Bain).
It is necessary for negotiations to take place now. There is a great deal of catching up to be done. We press the Government to get on with this, as already a large number of nurses wonder why they gave an undertaking not to strike and whether it was sensible and worthwhile. They cannot be blamed for thinking along those lines when the Government appear not to have regarded their case as urgent or essential.
We recognise, too, the problems of many ancillary workers in the Health Service. These problems were referred to convincingly by my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury, but the nurses are a different case and should be considered separately from other workers in the Health Service. The leader in the Daily Mail of 7 March reads as follows:
 To dole out—and then only grudgingly—to the nurses no more than has been offered to the ancillary workers is to insult duty and to reward anarchy…the nurses have an unanswerable case for a more generous award. The ancillary workers have harried and harassed the sick. The nurses, skilled, disciplined and devoted, have coped magnificently amid the chaos. Failure to recognise this in terms of hard cash mocks natural justice and is utterly beyond the comprehension of the overwhelming majority of men and women in this country.
I shall not say that I agree with every word in that leader, but the general view that the nurses should be regarded separately and have played a magnificent part in the present industrial chaos I endorse entirely.
Given the strength of their claim, it is extraordinary that the Government found it necessary to take so long to give attention to their predicament. It was as long ago as March last year that Miss Catherine Hall, the moderate, cautious and highly respected secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, pointed out that standards of nursing care were now so low that the safety of patients in many hospitals was in question. She drew attention to the lack of pay, to their claim, and to the fact that junior nurses were being asked to look after whole wards without proper supervision. She spoke of the fact that wards were closed

because of the shortage of nurses and that in certain areas nurses were unemployed.
I know from my experience that in Guy's hospital there are, every day, misunderstandings and complications because of shortage of staff. A few years ago that would have been totally unthinkable. Now it is taken as one of the necessary day-to-day features of hospital life.
I raised this issue with the Secretary of State shortly after Miss Hall had made her statement. He brushed it on one side with the totally unfeeling statement that nurses were always asking for better conditions. By the time he got to Harro-gate he realised what a disastrous mistake he had made and that the situation was far more serious than he had recognised. In October, the Royal College of Nursing presented its detailed examination and comparisons of wage scales with other careers. In that document the nurses gave—in writing—their undertaking not to strike. In the last paragraph of that document the nurses said that they would put service before self and refrain from using the strike weapon.
Sadly, the nurses went on and said that morale was damaged when their voluntary renunciation appeared to be exploited rather than appreciated. That renunciation was exploited by the Government. They carry a heavy responsibility for that. The nurses now find themselves lumped with all the other staff. No wonder they are disillusioned and wondering whether they have made a mistake in saying that they would not consider striking.
That is no way to treat the only professional body of people working in this area who have clearly and outspokenly stated that under no circumstances will they take strike action.

Mr. Moyle: I should not like the hon. Gentleman to be under any misapprehension. He is aware, is he not, that negotiations are still going on? He is talking as if a decision has been reached.

Dr. Vaughan: I am not talking as if a decision has been reached. But I cannot avoid the observation that it is now 11 months since the seriousness of the situation was realised. Yet meaningful negotiations started only after Christmas. That seems to us a most extraordinary delay. It is typical of the delays that


occur over and over again in the administration of the Health Service under the present Government. I do not understand it. I cannot see the need for it.

Mr. Moyle: I can give the hon. Gentleman a very short explanation. The reorganisation for which he voted slows everything down.

Dr. Vaughan: That is a cheap and untypical remark from the Minister. This Government have had the responsibility for the Health Service for over four years yet they have decided not to put right the present chaos.
I was interested to hear the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mrs. Jeger) point out—and it was very refreshing—that many of the problems in the Health Service today stem not, as the Minister would say, from the Conservative Benches but from the grandiose ideas of the late Mr. Crossman.
The Secretary of State made an important statement about the use of volunteers. But why did he wait until now? Why could he not make that statement when we asked him to do so a few weeks ago? Why did he have to wait until the industrial situation had deteriorated even further? In most places where the health authorities called in volunteers, clearly and firmly, and said what they were going to do, the militant action was reduced. But where the health authorities dithered and waited for directions—which they never received—the militancy almost always increased.
We criticise the Government because there is no clear leadership in the Health Service. The Government must take the responsibility for having allowed the industrial situation to drift in this way. They knew, as we heard from the press in November, that a major strike by NUPE was being contemplated. Yet the Government took no action. They knew even more clearly in December because by then the union had sent out instructions to its shop stewards saying that it planned to cause the maximum disruption of services to patients. But the Government took no action.
It could have been no surprise for the Government to hear it said last week:
 We intend to put the squeeze on the Health Service. We will gradually build up our action

so more and more hospitals are reduced to emergency services only.
What an appalling, callous and deplorable thing to say. Those are the words of the NUPE spokesman, a senior trade union official.
Whatever the outcome of the dispute, words such as those and the actions that go with them have damaged morale in the Health Service even further. It will be a long time before some sections forget and forgive. Those involved are uncaring. They have no regard for the feelings, sufferings or even the basic safety of patients—children, old people and the seriously ill. It is simply not true that emergency cover of the kind to which reference has been made will safeguard all seriously ill patients. I am afraid that many of the strikers know that—but not all of them care. That is the frightening aspect about the present industrial scene.

Mr. Stallard: We are following the hon. Member's speech closely. But I did not hear him make similar remarks when junior doctors made the same type of protest. We should not play the party game. The action was wrong then. There should have been strong protests from the Opposition Bench as there were from the Labour side of the House.

Dr. Vaughan: The hon. Member will be fair enough to admit that we were critical of the junior doctors. We were clear about our position. We were clearer than Labour Members.

Mr. Pavitt: But the hon. Member did nothing.

Dr. Vaughan: That is not so.
The terrible aspect is that the strikers do not care. Otherwise, how could it be said that:
 If it means lives lost, that is how it must be.

Mrs. Wise: Does the hon. Member not know that that quotation was taken completely out of context? The person who was alleged to have made that statement was saying that the whole decline in the Health Service would put lives at risk. The hon. Member should be more responsible before he inflames passions even more. Why did he not say some time ago that these workers had a good case for better wages and put his efforts into helping them achieve that and so prevent these activities?

Dr. Vaughan: I am not surprised that the hon. Lady jumped up, because she knows that the words have not been taken out of context. I quoted the words accurately. She knows that there were other words of a similar kind. What about the picket who said"Do not ask us about the patients going for cancer surgery, ask them "? They were harsh, unfeeling and brutal words.

Mrs. Wise: Is the hon. Gentleman not aware that claims about cancer patients were refuted by a particular hospital in Birmingham and that the responsibility was laid at the door of the consultant concerned? Is he not lowering the tone of the debate by playing off one section of health workers against another? The fact is that they all have a good case. They have all had terrible decisions to make in balancing the needs of their families and the needs of the patients. It is our job to take away from them the need to make those decisions, because it cannot be satisfactorily done by them.

Dr. Vaughan: The hon. Lady is irate because she realises that I am stating facts.

Mrs. Wise: Oh no.

Dr. Vaughan: I am looking reality in the face and merely saying what has been happening. In many cases life-threatening situations are now beyond the capacity of doctors and nurses to deal with. In many hospitals decisions are now taken not by the staff but by union representatives—often by a porter. He is a very valuable part of the hospital team but not, I would suggest, the person to make medical decisions or say what is or is not a medical emergency.
Had the hon. Member for Coventry, South-West read The Daily Telegraph on Monday—I do not suppose that she did—she would have seen set out various examples of appalling situations from first-hand knowledge that have occurred in hospitals where emergency cover only was being allowed by unions." Emergency cover only"does not mean that lives will not be at risk.
I was interested in a leader—

Mr. Pavitt: The hon. Gentleman has tried to make the maximum amount of political capital out of the situation and

has not tried to solve the problem or help matters. I should like to point out that although in my experience the majority of doctors and consultants do not play politics, over this last period of go-slows and so on, doctors in my own constituency were deliberately exacerbating matters by not using the usual channels of procedure so as to be able to make a political point against the strikers.

Dr. Vaughan: I should have thought that that was absolute rubbish and totally against the Hippocratic principles of the medical profession.

Mr. William Hamilton: Come off it!

Dr. Vaughan: I was brought up on the dictum of that famous physician, Sir William Osier—to comfort always. That is the first priority. To say that members of the medical profession play party politics in the way the hon. Gentleman suggests is absolute nonsense.
I was very interested to see in the leader of the Daily Mail a discussion as to why words such as I have quoted should be said, and how such an appalling situation can occur where the Jamie Morrises of our society are able to mislead their colleagues within the unions. He is the man who will not work at his proper job and yet apparently he cannot be sacked. It strikes me that one of the reasons is that so many members of the unions are afraid that they will be victimised if they do not agree with whatever directive is given to them.
The point that I wanted to make in regard to the leader in the Daily Mail was that that newspaper was asking why this should happen, and was pointing out the arrogance of the so-called public servants. That leader also made what I thought was a relevant point about remoteness in administration. That is one of the reasons why we as a party, subject to the recommendations of the Royal Commission, are so determined to restore small health units, where communication can take place and where the local community will once again be in touch with those units.
The result of all this unrest—again, this is uncomfortable for Labour Members—is shown most clearly and tragically in the waiting list. What do Labour Members say about 28,000 hospital admissions cancelled? The hon. Member for Coventry,


South-West is walking out of the Chamber. I am not surprised. What would the hon. Lady say about the fact that the waiting list is now over 800,000? It is an absolute disgrace in personal terms. Even before the recent increases, and ever since the present Government took over in 1974, the queues for treatment have got steadily worse.

Mr. Moyle: There is absolutely no justification for saying that the waiting list is over 800,000—none at all.

Dr. Vaughan: Then the Minister should talk to his own advisers, because our information is that it is just around 800,000. I should like him to say categorically in this House that that figure is wrong. I do not think he will find that it is. I should like him to say that the most serious feature of this is not just the total waiting list but the number of people who are now waiting for urgent investigations.
A few weeks ago—and the percentage will have gone up since then—we knew that in the Oxford area 70 per cent. of patients needing urgent investigations had to wait two, three, four, or five months—and all over two months. I heard the other day that in the Manchester area the waiting time for urgent investigations is now well over two months and is rising rapidly.
The hon. Member for Coventry, South-West looks perplexed, but these are facts from different parts of the country. If she does not agree, I suggest that she goes round the country and talks to people.

Mrs. Wise: I was looking perplexed, because I was searching in my mind to try to remember any occasion when the Conservative Opposition brought before this House any motion urging more expenditure on the NHS. I am afraid that I did not remember a single occasion, because the Conservative Opposition spend their time calling for cuts in public expenditure. Can the hon. Gentleman quote any proposals that have come from the Conservative Opposition—say, on a Supply day—calling in specific terms for more money for the NHS?

Dr. Vaughan: All the hon. Lady has done is to make me regret that I gave way to her. [HON. MEMBERS:" Answer the

question ".] The hon. Lady is walking out again. Of course, I shall answer the question in a moment, but let me make my speech in my way. Labour Members have had their chance to make their speeches in their way. The point I am making is this. When, a few weeks ago, I put to the Secretary of State that there were now hundreds of hospitals restricting their services, he said that I was alarmist and exaggerating. What about the figure now that there are over 600 hospitals dealing with emergencies only? Nine hospitals are closed completely, and 5,500 beds are out of action. What a terrible indictment of the Socialist Administration. 
Sadly, in recent years, we have witnessed an almost total lack of leadership from the Government. They have sheltered behind the Royal Commission, decisions have been postponed, muddles have been created and frustration has been allowed to build up until it can be exploded by the Jamie Morrises of this world. If Labour Members think that that is an exaggeration, they should stop and think and look at the situation over the nurses. Months have gone by. They should consider the strike of the maintenance supervisors just before Christmas. About 60,000 people, we are told, were added to the waiting list as a result of that strike alone. The problem of their pay had started four years previously. There was no denial in this House when it was put to the Secretary of State that the dispute could have been averted in January 1978—over a year ago—if there had been proper negotiations and attention paid to the matter. Instead, it was allowed to build up and explode into a disastrous strike.
There has not only been delay in industry matters. I can produce a list of inexplicable delays by the present Administration. The Howie report on the safety of laboratories was available in January last year. It stated specifically that certain laboratories were working at a dangerous standard. Nothing was done until the disaster at Birmingham, which led to the Shooter report.
I was horrified at the reply I received when I wrote to the Secretary of State before Christmas about the state of laboratories and asked how much it would cost to put the laboratories back on to a safe footing. I would have thought that


was a perfectly reasonable and responsible question. In his reply, the Secretary of State said he had discussed the matter with Sir James Howie who, for various reasons, had refused to give him the information. He was, therefore, unable to tell me the cost. In the Secretary of State's view, it was not his responsibility to see that our laboratories were safe. It was the responsibility of individual health authorities. What a washing of hands of responsibility that is. I shall make the letter available to the hon. Member for Coventry, Southwest if she wishes to check what I say.
There is delay on every side. It is not surprising that, going round the country, one finds not only appallingly low morale in many places, but a widespread feeling that there is a lack of direction, a lack of leadership and a lack of any sense of purpose on the part of the Secretary of State. I appreciate as much as any hon. Member in this House the personal health problems of the Secretary of State. At the same time, he and the Government must recognise that morale is low and that there is a feeling of a total lack of any sense of purpose and direction in the administration of the National Health Service.

Mr. Stallard: I am also concerned about this question of morale. Would the hon. Gentleman not agree that much of that loss of morale occurred as a result of the reorganisation of the Health Service by his right hon. Friends and hon. Friends? That reorganisation threw the whole Service out of gear. That was where the loss of morale started. It has got worse ever since.

Dr. Vaughan: Are we to sit back forever? Are we to make no decisions or restore any sense of direction? Do we merely say that this is all the fault of the previous Government? That is absolute nonsense. It is a total lack of responsibility. My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) was right—

Mrs. Wise: rose—

Dr. Vaughan: I am sorry but I intend to continue my speech. It is late in the day. I am sure hon. Members want to get on to other parts of the Consolidated Fund Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich was right when he said that one has to go outside this country if one

wants to see a first-class health service and first-class health care.

Mr. William Hamilton: In America?

Dr. Vaughan: No, not at all. Why, in France, for instance, are there no waiting lists? That country has the same size of population and a smaller number of hospital beds. In terms of actual personal health care, France does not have the tragedies that occur in Britain of people becoming incurably ill while waiting to get into hospital.

Mr. Pavitt: I have seen the operation of health service in most countries, including France. What the hon. Gentleman ignores is that the standard of care in the industrial sector, especially the nationalised industries such as Renault, is based on an industrial and occupational health system which does not exist in Britain. If only the hon. Gentleman would support an occupational health system we would be able to achieve more.

Dr. Vaughan: That is an interesting intervention. The French have a system whereby, if a person has an accident, an emergency, or one of 25 major illnesses which cover practically all the major illnesses one can think of, there is 100 per cent. and immediate health care. Surely that is a desirable state of affairs. More than that, they have a philosophy that is constructive and go-ahead. The French are determined to maintain a high level of health care for all their residents.

Mr. Pavitt: What happens in practice?

Dr. Vaughan: Before the hon. Gentleman makes that sort of remark he should go to the country concerned.

Mr. Pavitt: I have done. I am talking from experience.

Dr. Vaughan: If that is so, the hon. Gentleman has spoken to the wrong people.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Boscawen) suggested a number of ways in which improvements could be made. I have already referred to the remarks of the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South when she referred to the late Mr. Crossman. She made an interesting comment but I am sure that she did not mean it in the way in which I took it. She said that


we should put the money with the patient. That is exactly what is done in many countries. That is done by means of insurance systems. The patient carries the cost with him to wherever he cares to seek treatment. He may go to any doctor or hospital in any part of the country and he knows that his health care will be covered without any restrictions or restraint. I am sure that that is not what the hon. Lady meant.

Mrs. Jeger: The two situations are surely not comparable. In Britain one can go anywhere and receive medical treatment without having to take any money. I was trying to say that we have so localised the financing of what should be a national health service that we have become in a muddle. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would not want to misrepresent what I said.

Dr. Vaughan: I assure the hon. Lady that I have no need to do so.
We should consider closely alternative methods of financing the National Health Service after the Royal Commission has reported. Opposition Members are as determined as hon. Members on the Labour Benches to have a National Health Service that provides proper, first-class health care to every person who requires it at the time that they require it. There is no difference between the parties on that score. The differences lie in the way in which that sort of care is achieved.
Many hon. Members have referred to the administrative problems of the National Health Service. I shall not go into the difficulties now. However, there is the problem of remote administration. That could not have been better shown than by the examples we were given by many Labour Members, especially those who were concerned with the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital.
If women feel the need to have a special hospital dealing with their illnesses, we think that they are entitled to have such a hospital. We support them on that issue. As Labour Members have said, the tragedy and the disgrace surrounding the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital is that the hospital has been destroyed by bureaucracy. It has been destroyed by uncertainty. The hospital has been steadily run down. Maintenance has not been

done. I shall not go into all the matters that have been so graphically described.
It is difficult to get staff for the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital because the hospital's future is unknown. One arrives at a point where the hospital is no longer viable and there is then the argument that it should be closed. That is an absolute disgrace. When we come to power later this year, if at all possible the hospital will be kept open.

Mr. Stallard: Is the hon. Gentleman supporting my argument that the EGA shall remain unconditionally on the site?

Dr. Vaughan: What I said was that the way that the hospital's existence has been thrown into question is an absolute disgrace. We totally support the right of women to have such facilities. Its structure is decaying and the whole thing is falling into disaster, but if it is possible to maintain it we shall certainly want to do so.
The situation at St. Columba's hospital in Spaniards Road is similar. A question mark was thrown over the future of the hospital and within days there were telephone calls inquiring whether the staff could be moved to other hospitals and asking what would happen. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead (Mr. Finsberg) on his immediate action. That hospital is carrying out the kind of care that is immensely compassionate and cannot be undertaken in large institutions. It requires a small hospital with close contact between staff and patients. People from all over the country and all parts of the world visit the hospital to learn about the treatment and care that is given there. There should be more such hospitals, not fewer. It is incomprehensible that viable, flourishing and highly effective hospitals should be shut down.
I headed a deputation to the Minister about the Lord Mayor Treloar hospital at Alton, which again has a large question mark over it. It is a specialist orthopaedic hospital threatened with closure at a time when in other parts of the country such specialist centres are being established. With one hand we are tearing down a specialist centre and with the other planning to build more. That just does not make sense.
With few exceptions the debate has been useful. It is over four years since


the Government took responsibility for the National Health Service. During that time the decline has been steady, progressive and disastrous, not only in the standard of service offered to patients but to the morale of the Service as a whole. The Secretary of State and the Ministers have totally failed to give the leadership and directives necessary to restore the situation.

9.33 p.m.

The Minister of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Mr. Roland Moyle): The debate has been wide-ranging and useful. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) on coming top in the ballot and selecting this subject for debate. It has enabled us to review the situation in the Health Service, consider some pressing problems and make useful suggestions for the way forward.
To begin with, we must consider pub-lice expenditure. There should be a steady growth in the resources available to the National Health Service. We are prepared to meet that commitment and have struggled to do so. The rate of growth has not been as high as we should have liked, but we have maintained it.
On the other hand, there is an uncertain call from the Opposition. On any particular issue right hon. and hon. Members always call for increased public expenditure, and in this case they want an increase to meet the nurses' pay claim. That is typical. But when it comes to an overall statement of policy, their cry is for a substantial cut in public expenditure.
Until now we have had complete irresponsibility in approach displayed by the Opposition. This afternoon there has been a slight break. There has been a rush of blood to the head in the case of two or three hon. Members who have stated clearly that the correct way to meet the problem of increased expenditure for certain aspects of the National Health Service is by taking funds away from the support of industry—and presumably meeting the consequent rise in unemployment—and redeploying them to the National Health Service.
The alternative put forward by the hon. Members for Reading, South (Dr. Vaughan) and for Wells (Mr. Boscawen)

is that the funding of the National Health Service should be based on the national insurance principle. As I understand the national insurance principle, people make contributions and receive the service to which their contributions entitle them. What happens when they run out of benefit under the national insurance scheme? Does it mean that they have to go without health care, as happens in a number of European countries, or that there is some form of subvention from some other source—in which case why bother with the national insurance system anyway? That question has not been answered, and I do not believe that it is answerable in any terms of logic. People would have to pay for the services of the Health Service at the time when they had to use them, and that is a principle which we on this side of the House are determined to avoid.

Mr. William Hamilton: Does my right hon. Friend recall the official commitment of the Tory Opposition in"The Right Approach"that they will increase charges all round—ophthalmic, dental and so on? That is how they would get the cash.

Mr. Moyle: Yes, that is the logic of the approach of the hon. Members for Wells and for Reading, South. It means either a further increase in bureaucracy, in order to check that those who cannot meet the charges are helped from an alternative source—and we already have much too much bureaucracy in the NHS—or denying health care to those who need it but cannot afford it. Those are the questions that Opposition Members continually dodge.
The hon. Member for Reading, South said that we had had a responsible debate. That is true, apart from one passage in his speech. After some weeks of industrial action, three of the four unions representing the ancillary workers have agreed to accept the latest offer made to them and throughout much of the Health Service members of those unions and some members of NUPE are going back to work. At that junction and against that background, the hon. Member took the opportunity to rake over the cold ashes of the disputes and disagreements of the last few weeks. He must have known that that would have


the effect of resurrecting all these disputes, stirring them up and making the situation worse.
I cannot condone industrial action in the Health Service. Although people may feel that they are forced to take such action, we should have a situation in which they do not feel forced to take it. When they do take action, they can only put the patients at risk. All the instances and examples that the hon. Member quoted arose where individuals, beset by members of the press, local and national, had had their remarks taken out of context and blown up out of all proportion in order to make a headline. When this happened, right hon. and hon. Members, week after week, made the maximum use of these remarks.
On every occasion when matters were raised with the headquarters of the unions concerned, the unions took action, and those disputes were quickly sorted out. I do not pretend to defend the code of practice as desirable. However, the code was applied and the emotion and heat were taken out of the situation.

Mr. Christopher Price: Does the Minister realise that it is not only the hon. Member for Reading, South (Dr. Vaughan) who adopts this thoroughly irresponsible attitude towards the unions? The hon. Gentleman's boss, the right hon. Member for Wanstead and Woodford (Mr. Jenkin), recently called for the sacking of the chairman of the Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham AHA, accusing him of moving a resolution mentioning COHSE and NUPE, which was a mendacious statement. The chairman had not mentioned COHSE and NUPE. The right hon. Gentleman was obliged to retract the statement in spite of the fact that it was issued as a Conservative Party press release. Does not my right hon. Friend think that that shows that Conservative Front Bench Members are in no business other than simply waging an anti-union battle for votes and are doing absolutely nothing to help the situation and get things back to normal?

Mr. Moyle: My hon. Friend has put the case clearly of Mr. Hardy, chairman of the Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham AHA. I endorse every word my hon. Friend said. I understand that my hon. Friend notified the right hon. Mem-

ber for Wanstead and Woodford (Mr. Jen-kin) that he would raise the case.

Dr. Vaughan: I understood that the Minister intended to refer to the correspondence on this matter from my right hon. Friend.

Mr. Moyle: I did not intend to refer to the case. The right hon. Member for Wanstead and Woodford made an unfounded accusation against Mr. Hardy, chairman of the Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham AHA, which Mr. Hardy refuted. I accept from the records that Mr. Hardy is absolutely right. I shall leave the matter there. It is a matter for the right hon. Member for Wanstead and Woodford to take further if he wishes.

Mr. Christopher Price: I should like to make the record clear. I understand that the right hon. Member for Wanstead and Woodford retracted the statement that mention was made of COHSE and NUPE in a letter from Mr. Hardy, and admitted that his statement was false.

Mr. Moyle: It appears that that handsome gesture buries the matter. It is best that these matters are not started in the first place.
The hon. Gentleman agrees that there is too much bureaucracy in the Health Service. The Conservative Government created the organisation that set up the bureaucracy. There has been a 20 per cent. increase in the number of administrative and management staff in the Health Service as a result of that reorganisation. Although some of it was taken from the local authority community health services, a great deal of it was self-generated as a result of the reorganisation.
We are waiting for the advice of the Royal Commission to tell us the way forward out of this burgeoning mess with which we were landed. We are determined not to rely on the management consultants employed in the early 1970s by the Tory Government, who later said that they had made a mess of the Service. This time we have chosen people with considerable experience of the Health Service in one capacity or another. We hope that they will give us good advice.
In the meantime, it lies ill in the hon. Gentleman's mouth to criticise this


Government for bureaucracy when the Conservative Government were the source of it. If the hon. Gentleman has any doubts, I refer him to the remarks of his right hon. Friend the Member for Wan-stead and Woodford in Committee yesterday in discussions on postgraduate hospitals. His right hon. Friend admitted that he and his colleagues had considerable responsibility for the bureaucracy in the Health Service and he was heartily ashamed of it.
We have said that the Howie report must be introduced over the next three years and the laboratories brought up to the appropriate standard. But it is a question, as my right hon. Friend said, for the area health authorities, because this is the organisation with which we were left by the Conservative Administration—that area health authorities should have the administrative responsibility for running the Health Service.
My hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central and many others—in fact, practically every hon. Member who spoke in the debate—referred to the nurses. I agree that it is a very dedicated profession and that the nurses are a hard-working group of people within the Health Service. I would be the last person to say that we could do without any of the various groups within the Health Service. They all perform a vital role and function. But if one had to go through the exercise of shedding any groups of people, the last group that I would want to see leave the Health Service—either short-term, by industrial action, or by losing them in any other way—is the nurses. If one has a good, hard-working, dedicated nurse force, one can run some sort of a health service, whereas without the nurses, either in the community or in the hospitals, one would be in a very serious position indeed.
My right hon. Friend and I appreciate the decision, reached the other day by the Royal College of Nursing, that nurses would refrain from the use of industrial action in support of their claims for improvement in their terms and conditions of service and in their wage rates. We very much appreciate that, but it is not, of course, an exclusive decision. Other groups of nurses in other organisations have not taken the same decision. It is a Royal College of Nursing decision. As

a result of that initiative, the Royal College of Nursing has mobilised public opinion and sympathy behind its case—and that, in my opinion, is the vital deciding factor in all these pay matters—and it could not have achieved this in any other way.
My hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central, having done a great deal of research, presented a very powerful and cogent claim, argued in great detail. He quoted comparable rates of pay, such as those of primary school teachers, social workers, police and many other groups. I would not wish to argue with him on the case that he put forward. I suspect, without having the details at my fingertips, that there is a considerable amount in what he says. For that reason, it is particularly important that that case should be argued, because our power to influence wage settlements in the private sector of employment in this country was removed shortly before Christmas by the Opposition in a vote.

Mr. William Hamilton: By the right hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. du Cann).

Mr. Moyle: I would not restrict responsibility to him. I would extend it to the whole of the Conservative Party. The result is that everyone in the public sector feels vulnerable. People feel that their relative position will be made much worse by movements in the private sector. This is the problem that we have to solve.
It is a result of this that we are basing the solution of public pay problems on the institution of a comparability study. All the arguments that my hon. Friend put to the House—generally supported by my hon. Friends and other Members—will be capable of being argued in front of the comparability body.
My hon. Friend the Member for Brent, South (Mr. Pavitt) said that nurses cannot be given productivity payments. That point will also be argued when the comparability study takes place, and can be taken into account in comparing nurses' remuneration with that of other groups, and an appropriate solution sought.
What is absolutely true is that the only other two occasions in the history of the nursing profession when it has received a substantial increase in pay have been under a Labour Government. In 1970 they received an increase of 20


per cent. but under the succeeding Conservative Government they fell back. When we came to power in 1974 the Halsbury Committee was set up to carry out a comparability exercise which led to increases of 30 per cent.
I am prepared to say that the Government have made a mistake. We thought that if the normal pay policy increases were taken into account the nurses would be kept in their rightful position in society. Today we have considerable doubts about that. Therefore, the comparability study is being set up and this time we are taking steps to avoid the mistake made after 1974.
The Government will accept the comparability study on the nurses if they accept it. It is on offer to the nurses not only for this year but for 1980,1981 and 1982 and succeeding pay rounds so that, in future, any likelihood that nurses will fall behind will be automatically corrected by the continuing review. I believe that when the history of the nursing profession and its terms and conditions of service is written, 1979 will be regarded as even more significant than 1970 or 1974.
The comparability study will be instituted in two stages. The first stage will operate from 1 August of this year and the subsequent stage on 1 April 1980. Although the review of the position of nurses in society has begun later than that of the doctors, they will, by 1 April 1980, have caught up and will be moving in step with them. The Government have been urged to adopt a speedy solution, but if a proper and scientific study of the position of nurses in society is to be carried out we are not likely to be able to complete the necessary investigations and evaluations before 1 August of this year.

Mr. Pavitt: In view of the representations made by Labour Members about the backlog of 1978–79 would not my right hon. Friend reconsider the phasing date to see whether a stage should be introduced on 1 April of this year in relation to the 1978 figures?

Mr. Moyle: The nurses have been offered 9 per cent. plus £1 on account of the comparability study. I shall not comment in any more detail on the negotiation except to say that there was

another meeting of the Whitley Council last Tuesday. It was a good, hard-working session and further progress has been made. I am sure that there will be future meetings of the council.
We fully appreciate the value of nurses to the Health Service and we wish to ensure that their proper position in society is achieved, relative to those groups with which they have always compared themselves. I deprecate remarks that seem to imply that a decision has already been taken on nurses' pay. Their normal settlement date is not until 1 April of this year. Negotiations are still continuing, but I shall not comment on the details at this stage.

Mr. Pavitt: Will my right hon. Friend give a specific answer to the point made by a number of my hon. Friends? In modern jargon, the nurses' case is not just a special case; it is an exceptional and unique case. Therefore, it should have a different standing in the Government's assessment. We are asking my right hon. Friend to say categorically that it is exceptional and unique.

Mr. Moyle: I have attempted to indicate to the House why I regard the nurses' case as being of considerable, exceptional—or whatever adjective my hon. Friend wishes to apply—importance. I cannot elaborate further. I have indicated that I believe that nurses play a vital role in the NHS.
My hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. Stallard) made a brisk, breezy and enjoyable return to the Back Benches after years of silence in the Whips' office and made a powerful speech. He said that he was horrified by the NHS and that it was seriously ill. That over-dramatised the position a little and I should like to give some figures about the flow of resources into the Service.

Dr. Vaughan: May I take the Minister back to what he was saying about nurses' pay? I was not clear whether he was saying that there would be annual or twice-yearly increases or whether there was to be a continuous upgrading, linked to comparability.

Mr. Moyle: It has been the practice of nurses to put in an annual pay claim, and annual adjustments in pay rates are


part of pay policy these days. When the nurses have had their rate of pay for April 1979 to April 1980 settled, I would expect that they will want a review of their pay rate from April 1980 to April 1981. No doubt they will put in a claim and, under the Government's scheme, the comparability Commission under Professor Clegg would still be in existence and would review the nurses' claim against the background of movements in the pay of groups with which nurses have traditionally compared themselves. Further adjustments could be made and the nurses would be joined in that exercise by other groups, rather as the Doctors' and Dentists' Review Body reviews the pay of those professions. That is what is on offer to the nurses and why I said that 1979 will turn out to be a more significant year than 1970 or 1974 in terms of the pay and conditions of nurses.

Mr. William Hamilton: Is it clear that the Tories are in favour of the comparability machinery? I understand that they poured a lot of cold water on the idea when it was first announced.

Mr. Moyle: My hon. Friend has a point. That has not been mentioned by the Opposition in this debate. I understand that they have undertaken that the four groups that the Government have said will be referred to the Commission will be allowed to go forward, but they have not committed themselves to what will happen in subsequent years or whether anything will be done for other public service groups.
If any Conservative Member wishes to intervene to elucidate that point, I shall be happy to give way to allow him to clarify the position.

Mr. William Hamilton: They will not answer that question.

Mr. Pavitt: Speak up or for ever hold your peace, Gerry.

Mr. Moyle: I should tell my hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North that when the Government came to power in 1974 we devoted about 5·3 per cent. of the gross national product to the NHS. That figure has risen slowly over the years to 5·6 per cent. We are putting aside each year a greater proportion of

our national wealth to the sustenance of the Service.
We are also recruiting more doctors and nurses and more professional and technical staff, such as occupational therapists, physiotherapists and radiographers. The nursing and midwives' force has increased by 10·3 per cent. while the Government have been in power, the medical force has increased by 11 per cent. and the professional and technical group, which was seriously under-recruited when we came to power, has been increased by 24 per cent. In addition, the works and maintenance staff has increased by about 13 per cent. That is a force which we set up in 1974.

Mrs. Wise: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for those figures which are very interesting. Since the hon. Member for Reading, South (Dr. Vaughan), after demanding my presence in the Chamber so imperatively, twice refrained from answering my specific question, I wonder whether my right hon. Friend can recall any occasion when the Opposition have brought forward specific requests for expansion of the National Health Service on any of the many opportunities that they have had to bring subjects before the House.

Mr. Moyle: I must confess that now the point is put to me by my hon. Friend—and I have searched my mind since she made the point in an intervention in the speech of the hon. Member for Reading, South—I cannot recall, certainly in the two and a half years that I have been in this position, any such proposal being made. Of course, the number of patients admitted to hospital has gone up from just over 5 million to 5,340,000, and outpatient attendances have gone up from 45 million to nearly 47 million and day case attendances have gone up very substantially from about 400,000 to 536,000.
So we get a picture of a very large National Health Service, beset by bureaucracy as a result of the reorganisation of 1974 and struggling with a new era of industrial relations problems, perhaps in a national mood of industrial relations militancy, but one which is deploying greater numbers of caring staff for ever greater numbers of patients. In that context we can discuss the problems that my hon. Friend has brought forward.

Mr. Stallard: I am sure that my right hon. Friend would not want to misinterpret what I said, because I said also that it was not only a question of how much money. Like all hon. Members on this side, I recognise and am very grateful for the fact that our Government have at least tried in very difficult circumstances to raise the amount expended. I was suggesting that there may be some different forms of allocation of available resources. It is a question of national funding, and cross-regional funding if necessary, for specialised projects. That was what I was arguing.

Mr. Moyle: Frankly, I am regularly beset by national funding requests. My hon. Friend mentioned the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital, the Hammersmith renal unit and some other projects also in relation to national funding. The hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison), in an Adjournement debate, asked for national funding for the spinal injuries unit at Stoke Mandeville. There are 12 postgraduate hospitals in London which want to be nationally funded. The teaching hospitals sometimes make representations that they want to be nationally funded. If these organisations are to be nationally funded, they have to be nationally managed. [HON. MEMBERS:"Why? "] One cannot allocate money to various units of the National Health Service unless one is confident that the money has been properly spent, and that means accepting a managerial responsibility for them. That would mean that my right hon. Friend and myself would rapidly be beginning to manage the greater part of the Health Service from our office. I gather that our office at the Elephant and Castle is not the favourite place of my hon. Friends. That was the deduction I made from their contributions to the debate—that, if anything, they would like the Elephant and Castle office reduced rather than expanded, but the proposals made for national funding lead entirely the opposite way.
For that reason, under the RAWP formula, allowances are made for cross-regional flows for special purposes—for example, if a facility for treating women by women, and not just for women's diseases, on a national scale, is maintained then the RAWP formula allows the resources for that facility to be

drawn from the National Health Service and the cross-boundary flow is across regions and from one end of the country to the other.

Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: In trying to refute the argument put by his hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. Stallard) about national funding, the Minister said that it would mean control from the centre. Does he not realise that since the war all Governments have in some cases given 100 per cent. specific grants without imposing any managerial control?

Mr. Moyle: That is not true of the modern Health Service. We do not retain national funds at the centre, apart from funds for specific experiments. That reminds me of the question raised about the detoxification unit at St. Thomas' Hospital. We believe that the proposal is much too expensive, but if the officials of the St. Thomas' health district and the Lambeth borough council and the other bodies concerned, who are holding discussions with officials, can agree on a more economic and streamlined experimental service, we would fund it for three years because it is experimental.
The broad bulk of Health Service funds is given to social service departments and area health authorities on the basis of the resource allocation formula to manage as they see best. That is the way in which we carry out the management of the Health Service, and that is the system for which the hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Finsberg) voted in the last Parliament but one.
On the question of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital, I first wish to say on behalf of my right hon. Friend and myself that we want to keep a facility for women to be treated by women, not just for women's diseases but generally to allow a woman to be treated by a woman. A facility for this is necessary for the next 20 years or so. If the number of young women going into medicine increases at the present rate, that service will be available on a routine basis at any general hospital probably by the end of this century. The hon. Member for Hampstead said that a large number of Muslim women had inhibitions about being treated by male doctors, which was why this service must be provided.
What is at issue between ourselves and my hon. Friends and the hon. Member for Hampstead is not that this facility should exist but where it should exist. We have been endeavouring to implement the undertaking given by my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) that it should be in another district general hospital within the same region. We have the Whittington hospital in mind, but it now seems that the Whittington hospital would be unable to accommodate a unit of this sort for about 12 or 13 years ahead. So we have to decide what to do in the interim and, maybe, permanently.
I gather that my hon. Friends and the hon. Gentleman discussed the matter yesterday with my right hon. Friend and he told them that he thought the best way of reducing the overheads of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital facility would be to examine whether it could be installed in the Royal Homoeopathic hospital buildings along with the Royal Homoeopathic hospital. There has been no decision to close the Royal Homoeopathic hospital. Indeed, as a postgraduate hospital it is a candidate for inclusion under a London postgraduate health authority. Therefore, the letter quoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mrs. Jeger) would be from an administrator of an area which would have no responsibility for the Royal Homoeopathic hospital.
My hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North made some harsh remarks about size and said that small is beautiful. I must defend the Department. It has moved away from the 1,400—and 1,500—bed hospitals of the 1960s. It believes that a district general hospital should have no more than between 600 and 900 beds.

Mr. Speaker: I am sorry to interrupt the Minister, but he is addressing the House, not his hon. Friends. He has had his back to me for the past 10 minutes.

Mr. Moyle: I apologise for turning my back on you, Mr. Speaker. The Department believes that a district general hospital should have between 600 and 900 beds and that, depending on local circumstances, that is the level that is required to maintain the conditions for modern medicine.
The real argument against the maintenance of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital is its size. Even with its maximum number of 157 beds, let alone the smaller number in existence now, it is not an economic proposition to maintain all the facilities of high-grade medicine. That is the reason. It is not because of the deterioration of the fabric of the building or the non-existence of the lift.
If money is spent on the lift, we will be committed to that building and the maintenance of the fabric for a long time. We do not wish to pour money into such a facility. The reason for trying to combine the hospital with other facilities is to share the overheads and reduce costs.

Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: Will the right hon. Gentleman answer the point made by the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mrs. Jeger) and myself about the voluntary offer of £8,000, with no commitment on the part of the Government? Is he accepting or rejecting that offer?

Mr. Moyle: My right hon. Friend has not yet had an opportunity to discuss that offer with me. I was unaware of it until this afternoon, but I shall consider it against the background of the remarks that I have just made. If one used that money for the purposes indicated, one would commit oneself to that building, which is too small for the practice of modern medicine at the best level. Nevertheless, when my right hon. Friend tells me the details of the offer I shall consider it.
The hon. Member for Hampstead raised the question of St. Columba's hospital. At its meeting in February, the area health authority decided to close the hospital temporarily because it was overspending and wished to retrench in order to keep within its budget. The hon. Member voiced his deepest suspicions that this might be a prelude to permanent closure because the authority has not carried out the proper consultative procedures.
I can reassure the hon. Gentleman. The area health authority will review its decision at its April meeting. The authority will consider three options. The first is the retention of the hospital. The second is a reaffirmation of the temporary closure. In that case the authority will


give undertakings to me that the closure will be temporary. The third option is permanent closure. If the authority decides to close the hospital permanently, it will have to go through the normal consultative procedure and the hon. Gentleman would be able to make his views known to the appropriate management.
I am not prepared to comment in detail further on St. Columba's because, if the authority decides to close it permanently and the hon. Gentleman's opposition succeeds at local level, the matter would come to me for decision. I do not want to prejudice any decision that I might reach by discussing the details of the problem now.

Mr. Geoffrey Finsburg: Is the Minister prepared to look, without commitment, at the point that temporary closure provides what appears to be an unfortunate loophole in the procedure of consultation?

Mr. Moyle: That would obtain only if there was an element of dishonesty. It does not provide a real loophole. But I shall continue to watch to ensure that nobody tries to get away with permanent closure by pretending that it is temporary closure. Under those circumstances, there will be no need to alter the consultative procedures.

Dr. Vaughan: Will the Minister bear in mind that this kind of nursing is highly specialised and requires a special kind of dedicated staff to carry it out effectively? Does he agree that temporary closure must mean the disposal of the trained staff?

Mr. Moyle: I am sure that that will be one of the factors which the area health authority will take into consideration in reaching its decision. If it came to permanent closure, it would certainly be one of the features I should have to consider in reaching a decision, if the matter came to me.

Mr. Stallard: I accept that the area health authority is to discuss the matter again in April, but my understanding is that admissions have been stopped as from now. If admissions are stopped, I imagine that the staff will begin to leave. Can my right hon. Friend assure the House that admissions will continue until

this reconsideration of the situation in April and that efforts will be made to retain the staff?

Mr. Moyle: Against the background of uncertainty, there will be no new admissions before the April meeting. But staff will be retained until the health authority reaches its decision.
The hon. Member for Wells said that nurse trainee recruitment was falling. He said that between March 1977 and March 1978 it fell by 21 per cent. I am happy to say that between March and December 1978 nurse trainee recruitment increased by over 30 per cent. That helps.
The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland will be writing to the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mrs. Bain) and to my hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride (Dr. Miller) about the issues that they raised.
My hon. Friend the Member for Penistone (Mr. McKay) spoke of the inadequacies in the deputising services for general practitioners. Two years ago there was considerable criticism of the services. My hon. Friend suggested that the deputising services should be run by the NHS. We considered this. But at the time our predecessors had already begun negotiations with the British Medical Association on a code of practice to govern the deputising services. Eventually we decided to follow that course.
Under the present system, a general practitioner is responsible for services to his patients throughout the 24-hour period. If anything wrong happens under the deputising service, the general practitioner is responsible. At least the existing system enables us to place responsibility exactly where it should lie.
The code of practice has been agreed between my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the BMA. If hon. Members hear of incidents which highlight inadequacies in the deputising service, complaints can be made to the family practitioner service, which will discover whether the code of practice has been applied and take action if it has not.
The hon. Member for City of London and Westminster, South (Mr. Brooke) spoke about Jamie Morris and his relations with him. I must warn him that


owning up to having relations with Jamie Morris will cause him to be regarded with the greatest possible suspicion by the right hon. Member for Wanstead and Woodford. I commend the hon. Member for the courage he displayed in owning up to an association with that gentleman.
The hon. Member also said that junior academic staff in dental hospitals received only a 2 per cent. increase last year. That was as a result of the Doctors and Dentists Review Body. It did not involve Government action. We always implement the DDRB reports.
My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South-West (Mrs. Wise) asked about the waiting lists for orthopaedic surgery in Coventry. She and her constituents are not unique. Lengthy orthopaedic waiting lists arise from a number of causes. She highlighted an important cause—bed blocking. Elderly ladies break their femurs and receive orthopaedic treatment, but no facilities are available in the community when they have finished treatment. They therefore

have to stay in hospital and block beds to other patients. Road accidents also add to the orthopaedic waiting lists.
Relatively new techniques have been introduced in the last 15 years and there is still a shortage of consultants in these techniques. It takes many years to train a consultant, and that leads to lengthy waiting lists. Other inadequate facilities such as a shortage of operating theatres also add to the problem.
My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South-West said that the problem could be solved partially by a plus rate for geriatric orthopaedic nursing. If the trade unions concerned put in a claim of that sort, I am sure that the management side will consider it and negotiate upon it. What the outcome will be, of course, I cannot foretell. It is a matter for the negotiating machinery.
We have had a wide-ranging debate on a number of interesting topics. I believe I have answered all the points raised. If by inadvertence I have missed someone out, I shall write to him.

UNITED NATIONS PEACEKEEPING

10.21 p.m.

Mr. Cyril D. Townsend: I wish to draw to the attention of the House the considerable expansion and general success of the United Nations peacekeeping operations, to put forward a few ideas on future developments and to probe the Government to find out what they have done to match words with deeds and what they hope to do in the future.
I have chosen a subject that has been of considerable interest to me since I was a professional soldier and one that is highly topical. Peacekeeping by United Nations forces has become an essential part of the work done by the United Nations for international harmony and security. We must not underestimate the problems, but here, surely, is one important area of UN activity where there can, and must, be major constructive development.
So far, 100,000 solders from 50 different armies have taken part—a remarkable fact. Throughout the past 21 years, at least one UN force has been on duty in some part of the world. UN forces watched over the two truces of 1948 between Israel and the surrounding Arab States. In 1949 they watched over the ceasefire in Kashmir and showed how a relatively small number of observers could successfully maintain a ceasefire and a ceasefire line.
Then came Korea in 1950 and Suez in 1956, when they supervised the withdrawal of Israeli, British and French forces, and later, in 1960, the Congo tied up 20,000 UN soldiers for four years and cost 126 lives and about £200 million. In 1962 and 1963 UN forces supervised the transfer of West New Guinea from the Netherlands to Indonesia. Today there are UN forces in Cyprus, Sinai and on the Golan Heights. In the Lebanon, the force under General Erskine, from Ghana, faces the most complex and dangerous challenge since the Congo bloodbath.
To turn to the British contribution, in the words of the"Statement on the Defence Estimates"for 1979,

 The United Kingdom has continued its support for existing UN forces. British troops and armoured reconnaissance and helicopter units form part of the UN force in Cyprus, and the United Kingdom provides logistic support from the Sovereign Base Areas for the whole of the UN force and also for the UN Interim Force in the Lebanon. In addition, RAF VC10 aircraft airlifted the Fiji contingent to the Lebanon in June 1978.
I only wish that Britain's contribution were better known in this country and abroad, and I ask the Government to try to obtain better publicity for it.
Peacekeeping is also superb training for our defence forces, giving them overseas service outside Germany—all too uncommon at present—and experience of international co-operation. It has particular value for the young NCO and for young new soldiers.
In the future, it is possible that there will be more demands than there are resources. For example, President Carter's peace initiative may need to be followed up by the dispatch of more forces to the Middle East, and there is talk of peacekeeping in Rhodesia and South-East Asia. However, we can all be encouraged by the increased interest among member nations.
When United Nations Emergency Force II was set up, 28 countries volunteered contingents, although only seven were needed. France now has a crack battalion with the UN forces in the Lebanon. West Germany, I am told, provided logistic support for another battalion in the characteristically prompt time of three days.
Recently the General Assembly passed a resolution calling for a new look at the whole question of peacekeeping, which was opposed only by the Soviet bloc. Over 80 countries supported the resolution. Unfortunately, peacekeeping activity in different parts of the world over the years has not resulted in the creation of a proper administrative structure at UN headquarters.
I approach this subject with some diffidence, as I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Mr. Rhodes James)—whom I am delighted to see on the Front Bench, and I hope that he will have a long sojourn there—is a real expert in this subject. A sub-committee of member countries has spent 13 years


studying the theory and practice of peacekeeping without producing sound proposals. Although the political direction of these forces from New York is good, the"nuts and bolts"business of mounting these operations and then sustaining them logistically is too often inefficiently and inadequately handled. This discourages the soldier on the spot and adds to the cost of getting him and keeping him there.
I sincerely believe that there is need for a small but really effective international military planning staff at UN headquarters. I know that my view is shared by a large number of senior officers with practical experience of UN peacekeeping. Anthony Verrier described in The Observer on 14 January how detailed planning for UNTAG in Namibia had been carried out by the Department of Defence in Ottawa because
 the UN has insufficient staff to cope with what will be an extremely complex operation ".
In passing, and perhaps as a humble first step, Britain's UN Ambassador could be given a military assistant. It is time that a permanent force—I have in mind a brigade group—was created to carry out training and to anticipate the next emergency. I know that the Minister has spoken most eloquently in the House on the need to anticipate future crises.
The House will recall that last year President Carter called for
 the creation of a UN peacekeeping reserve composed of national contingents trained in peacekeeping functions ".
In my opinion, such a force must have the very latest day and night surveillance equipment, including infra red aids, listening devices such as the British Army has in Ulster, drones and sideways-looking airborne radar. The application of highly sophisticated scientific techniques, including the use of satellites, will be able to help UN forces solve problems which have previously been insoluble. Science can give a whole new emphasis to peacekeeping operations.
There should be international and regional seminars and exercises. The United Kingdom should consider taking the initiative to form an international group on the Nordic model to study, train and plan jointly for UN operations. I should like to see a UN defence college run along the lines of the NATO defence

college. Surely it is astonishing that there is no official manual on peacekeeping, although there is an excellent private publication edited by Brigadier Michael Harbottle." The Peacekeeper's Handbook"has proved to be highly popular, and even the Chinese have recently shown interest. A further handbook is required for junior ranks.
I have put forward the suggestion of a UN disaster relief force which would be highly trained and mobile and prepared to tackle potential disasters such as earthquakes or cyclones and man-made disasters such as a major chemical or nuclear radiation leak. UN peacekeeping has become a special military task, quite different from the Imperial policing of the past and from that required in Ulster today. There is still a lack of knowledge, and possibly interest, in the British Army concerning the required techniques and operating procedures.
From the replies that I have received to written questions on the subject and from military sources, I have the impression that we pay little more than lip service to the training required to fit our Army for such duties. For example, I am told that at the Camberley staff college only 13½ hours during the year's course is devoted to this subject. The Canadians, who are widely experienced in UN operations, allocate a full fortnight to it at their staff college.
I understand that the International Peace Academy—a most useful institute that is patronised by 114 Governments who send staff officers and senior officials to attend its courses—is considering opening a branch in the United Kingdom. Would such an enterprise receive the active and unstinted support of the Government?
I welcome the Prime Minister's comments at the United Nations on 2 June last year on the need to strengthen the world body's peacekeeping role. I would like to ask the Minister who will reply—I apologise for the false start a few weeks ago—to say what has been done to follow up the Prime Minister's speech. In particular, the House should be told what the Foreign Secretary had in mind when, on 27 September, he declared that up to 1,000 British troops would be available to join a UN force at a week's notice. Are 1,000 now available? Which battalion has been designated? Where is it? Would


it be available for action in Rhodesia, and, if so, what exactly would be its task in that bloody but still unbowed country?
In that same speech, the Foreign Secretary offered military observers. That is excellent. How many officers are now being employed by the UN in that capacity? Very few, I suspect. If so, why? What exactly will Britain do to assist UN operations in Namibia? Has a British battalion been allocated as well as a signals and communications unit? How many men will Britain be sending, and when? Have some already gone there? What about hardware—helicopters, trucks and radios?
Experience suggests that a comparatively small UN force can reduce tensions and aggressive activity, thus facilitating a political settlement. UN peacekeeping offers hope to an increasingly divided and violent world. Britain could lead the way in getting UN peacekeeping organised in a more sensible and enlightened manner. After all, her military contribution to the UN has always been second to none.

10.32 p.m.

Mr. Frank Hooley: The House is indebted to the hon. Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend) for introducing this important subject in the debate on the Consolidated Fund. I am glad that by sheer accident—there was no collusion between us—we both wish to raise broadly the same topic. I was interested in the points that the hon. Member made and I shall try not to duplicate too much of what he said. I wish to concentrate my remarks on the problem of UNIFIL in the Lebanon.
The hon. Member is right to draw attention to the extraordinary and encouraging development of peacekeeping activities by the UN over the past 20 years. I would not entirely bracket Korea and some of the other episodes he mentioned in what has come to be known as UN peacekeeping, but I see no reason to quibble over that point.
I would regard the first UN peacekeeping force, in its now accepted sense, as the United Nations emergency force which was set up in 1957 in Sinai by Hammarskjöld following the attack on Egypt by Israel, France and the United

Kingdom. There followed, as the hon. Gentleman said, the creation in 1960 of the Congo force, which was the most ambitious, involving about 20,000 men at the peak of its efforts. In 1963 there was the Cyprus peacekeeping force, in 1974 UNEF II in Sinai, the second Sinai force, and again in that year the UN disengagement force in Syria. Finally, in 1978 there was the UN interim force in the Lebanon, to which the United Kingdom is, I believe, contributing £4½ million and logistic and other physical support.
As the hon. Gentleman said, there is, we hope, a fair possibility that there will be a UN force in Namibia in the course of this year if South Africa stops its present process of obstruction. I do not know whether that would be a peacekeeping force exactly but it would certainly be a supervisory force. Maybe—who knows?—in 1980 there may be a UN force in Zimbabwe.
This practical, pragmatic development of UN peacekeeping techniques over the years, by the creation of these forces and the experience gained, has been enormously valuable. It is a great tribute to the UN itself and to the officers of the UN who have assembled, commanded and directed these forces.
A number of interesting points arise from that experience. With the exception of the first Sinai force in 1957, all the forces have been created under the authority of the Security Council and by resolution of the council. That is significant. It clearly restores to the council its central role of maintaining international peace and law and order as envisaged in the charter. It is also significant that, although on occasions certain great Powers have abstained from the votes creating the various forces, no veto has been cast. It now seems fairly clear that there is no permanent member of the council that will veto the creation of a UN force when there is a clear indication by the international community that such a force is desirable and needed. That is encouraging.
Secondly, it is probably within the recollection of the House that at one time the argument over the cost of the forces threatened almost to destroy the UN. The quarrel between the Soviet Union and France on the one hand and other UN members on the other over whether the payments were a charge


under the charter led to a serious political crisis. Fortunately that was resolved and there is now no issue of principle on payment for UN peacekeeping forces. However, I am sorry to say that a number of members do not stump up very readily. Some are still badly in arrears with their payments.
Thirdly, there is the role of the permanent members of the Security Council in contributing troops. Originally, when the first Sinai force was set up, Dag Hammarskjöld elaborated a set of guidelines—they were sometimes referred to as the Hammarskjöld rules—among which was the suggestion that troops from permanent members of the council should not be included with the troops on the ground in UN peacekeeping forces. I am glad to say that that rule has been considerably modified. For example, British troops have served for many years with great distinction in the Cyprus force. I was glad to hear the tribute paid by the hon. Gentleman to Brigadier Michael Harbottle, who took part in those operations.
As we know, France has contributed to the UN force in the Lebanon, although it has recently withdrawn the infantry battalion. However, there are still about 600 French troops giving logistic and other support in the Lebanon to the UN force. That is encouraging. It is important that countries such as Britain and France take an active part in UN peacekeeping operations.
My view—it is one that is not very popular—is that at some time in future, perhaps not the immediate future, we may see American and Russian troops in blue helmets taking some part in UN peacekeeping operations and by their participation giving those countries an authority and prestige that only the really great super-Powers may have. That is probably a controversial argument. It is a view that would not be shared by everybody. However, I am sure that gradually the permanent members of the Security Council will have to be more and more involved in UN peacekeeping operations. That will be all to the good.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the number of countries that have taken part in UN peacekeeping forces over the years. He put the figure at 50, which I am not in a position to dispute. I am sure that he is right. From Europe there have been

Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, the United Kingdom, France, Ireland and Yugoslavia contributing at various times. Commonwealth countries such as Canada, India, Pakistan, Ghana, Nigeria and Fiji have made contributions. Latin American countries such as Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru and Panama have made contributions from time to time, such as sending troops or giving other help. Other countries such as Senegal and Nepal, which are currently involved in the UN operations in the Lebanon, have helped. I am sure that there are many others that I have not mentioned. I have not mentioned them not because I undervalue their contribution but because I am ignorant of it. Many countries that have not contributed troops have contributed funds or given logistic support to enable the operations to be carried out.
We know that the United Nations has produced distinguished commanders—men of the calibre of Rikhye, Silvasuo, Erskine and others—who have created a core of expertise in commanding forces of many different nationalities to cope with all the problems that are bound to arise, and who have done so with great skill and dedication. The world is indebted to those men for what they have achieved.
What success have the United Nations peacekeeping operations had? The first UNEF force in Sinai held the line successfully for 10 years, from 1957 to 1967. That force maintained peace on a dangerous and inflammable frontier. Had Israel shown the same co-operation with UNEF I as was displayed by Egypt, and had Israel allowed her forces to be stationed on her side of the frontier, there is a good probability that the tragic 1967 war would not have broken out.
The Congo involvement was a difficult, controversial and dangerous operation, but it succeeded in its main objective—namely, to prevent the break-up of the Congo as a single country and to prevent the secession of Katanga. That was the object of the original Security Council decision and was carried through successfully. But I believe that it would not have been carried through without the involvement of the United Nations force.
The"success ", if I may put that word in inverted commas, of the United Nations force in Cyprus is somewhat more controversial. It has helped to mitigate the human tragedy of Cyprus, although it


was not able to stop the Turkish invasion and the political problems in Cyprus are still unresolved.
It is still debatable whether UNEF II, the United Nations disengagement force on the Golan Heights and the United Nations force in the Lebanon can hold the line in the Middle East for long enough for us to see a permanent settlement. None of us knows what will happen in the next four or five years, or even longer ahead, in the Middle East, but those forces are there and are making an important contribution to stability. The Middle East would be a far more dangerous place without them.
I wish to spend some time on the activities of the United Nations force in the Lebanon because some serious considerations arise to which the Government should give their attention—indeed, not only our Government, but the Governments involved in the Security Council generally.
As the House will know, the reason for the creation of UNIFIL—the United Nations Interim Force in the Lebanon, to give it its full title—arose from the barbaric invasion by Israel of Southern Lebanon in March 1978 as a result of which 1,000, or perhaps more, people were killed, mostly civilians, 200,000 refugees were created and there was wanton destruction of homes, crops and animals and general devastation in Southern Lebanon.
That attack gave rise to resolution 425 of the Security Council, largely on the initiative of the United States, which was adopted on 19 March 1978. The main points of that resolution were as follows. First, the territorial integrity of the Lebanon must be respected, and there should be no question of Israel annexing Southern Lebanon, as she appeared to want to do. Secondly, Israeli forces must withdraw forthwith from that territory. Thirdly, a United Nations interim force in Southern Lebanon should be set up.
The terms of reference were, first, to confirm the withdrawal of Israeli forces; secondly, to restore peace and security in that area; and, thirdly, to help the Lebanese Government to ensure the return of their effective authority in the area. In fact, one of the major objectives of the creation of UNIFIL was to make it possible

for the lawful Lebanese Government to exercise some authority in their own territory in that particularly dangerous and difficult area.
The secretary-general of the United Nations acted with commendable speed to put the resolution into effect, and within 14 days United Nations troops were on the ground. There were contingents from Canada, France, Norway, Sweden and Iran, and offers from Nepal and Senegal. It was useful from the point of view of bringing the force together that the secretary-general was able to second troops from the existing UN operations in Syria and Sinai, and to some extent from Cyprus. The United Kingdom made a valuable contribution through the provision of staging and other facilities to get the troops there. By June 1978 the force had been built up to 6,000 men. France contributed by far the greatest contingent with 1,250 men. Norway contributed 930, Ireland 665, Nepal 642, Nigeria 669, Senegal 634, Fiji 500, Canada 100 and Iran 700.
The ceasefire was established and most Israeli forces were withdrawn. Unfortunately, instead of handing over authority and physical control to the UN forces, Israel handed over many important strategic positions to the Fascist militia, which was one of the contending parties in the Lebanon which had caused the original civil war, and this had led—partially at least—to the Israeli invasion. It was this action by Israel, in not handing over fully to the newly constituted forces sent by the international community to take over in the area, that led to a difficult and complex situation that has not yet been resolved.
The result was that, instead of UN forces being able to restore civil order and complete control in Southern Lebanon within the six months of their original mandate, the Security Council in September 1978 had to reconvene and reconsider the matter. It adopted resolution No. 434 on 18 September 1978, renewing the mandate until January this year and with the demand that Israel should co-operate fully with the UN forces.
On 18 November 1978 the secretary-general made a report on the progress of the operation in the Southern Lebanon. He told the Security Council that in areas where UNIFIL had full control effective


action against armed personnel and the progressive normalisation of civilian life had occurred. But unfortunately UNIFIL did not have full control in all parts of Southern Lebanon to which its mandate related.
I shall quote from some parts of the secretary-general's report. In paragraph 12 he said:
 UNIFIL has observed the presence of IDF personnel—
that is, Israeli regular forces—
 in southern Lebanon on a number of occasions. In particular, on 13 and 14 November, a group of about 30 IDF personnel were seen laying mines some 300 metres inside Lebanon in the area of Op Mar. This matter has been brought to the attention of the Israeli authorities with the request that such incursions cease.
He went on to say:
 An essential precondition for UNIFIL's success is the co-operation of all concerned, especially those armed elements and groups in and around its area of operation. In the present circumstances this particularly applies to the Lebanese de facto forces—
which is a euphemism for the Fascist militia—
 in the area and to the Government of Israel. I regret to have to inform the Council that at the present time the necessary co-operation is still lacking in these quarters, and the complete deployment of UNIFIL and the progressive re-establishment of Lebanese authority in the area is therefore blocked…
 17.…UNIFIL has from time to time requested the Israeli authorities to use their good offices and influence in efforts to control or moderate the actions of Major Haddad and his militia. The Israeli authorities have indicated that they do not control the Lebanese de facto forces. However, it has not been denied that they provide them with logistic and other forms of support. During the period under review, IDF personnel—
Israeli regular forces—
 have been observed on several occasions in southern Lebanon…
 20…UNIFIL is there to protect all groups of the population and is a threat to none. The fact that the Force has persisted, in the face of provocation and harassment, in seeking by peaceful means the constructive co-operation of all concerned, should be proof enough of its good faith. Thirdly, the present state of affairs, if continued, will inevitably lead to the erosion of UNIFIL. No one should be in any doubt as to the dangers of the situation that would then inevitably emerge. It is in the long-term interests of all concerned to avoid such a development.
Following that report by the secretary-general, the Security Council met and on 8 December made its own statement on

the matter in the light of that report. The statement was not a formal resolution. It was a statement adopted by consensus, read by the president of the council. I quote two paragraphs from it, as follows:
 The Council—
that is, the Security Council—
 therefore, calls upon all those not fully co-operating with UNIFIL, particularly Israel, to desist forthwith from interfering with UNIFIL's operations in southern Lebanon and demands that they comply fully without delay with the implementation of resolutions 425 (1978) and 426 (1978.)
This is important:
 The Council also calls upon Member States that are in a position to do so to bring their influence to bear on those concerned so that UNIFIL may discharge its responsibilities unimpeded.
The secretary-general made a further report to the Security Council on 12 January 1979. He pointed out that UNIFIL had continued to discharge its responsibilities so far as it was able. Not only was it exercising a peacekeeping role, but it had helped with the provision of food, water, electricity, the repair of school buildings and medical treatment to civilians in the areas where it was operating. He also said that there was continued harassment, including harassment of civilians, by the Fascist militia.
I want to quote briefly from the secretary-general's further report. Paragraph 31 states:
 On a number of occasions, UNIFIL has observed the presence of Israeli military personnel on Lebanese territory, either alone or together with elements of the Lebanese de facto armed groups. In addition to the instance of mine-laying described in my interim report…Israel Defence Force personnel have been seen manning checkpoints and positions, transporting water and supplies, constructing positions, observing the impact of shelling across the Litani River etc.
Paragraph 34 states:
 A crucial element for the effectiveness of the United Nations peace-keeping operations is the co-operation of the parties concerned, and UNIFIL is no exception to this rule. The fact is that UNIFIL now lacks the co-operation both of the de facto forces under Major Haddad and of the Israeli Defence Forces, in relation to the complete deployment of UNIFIL in its entire area of operations.
The Security Council took note of that report and on 19 January passed a formal resolution, resolution 444, the three operative sections of which were the following. First, it condemned the Israeli


obstruction of the United Nations peacekeeping operations and Israeli assistance to the Fascist militia. Second, it extended the mandate of UNIFIL for five months to 19 June 1979. Third, it stated categorically that in the event of any further obstruction the Security Council would examine ways and means of securing the full implementation of resolution 425, under which the United Nations peacekeeping force was orginally set up.
The French infantry were withdrawn earlier this year and I understand that they are to be replaced largely by Dutch troops. The Iran contingent has also been withdrawn, and I think it is intended that either Fijian, or possibly Senegalese, troops will make good that deficiency. There has been some slight change, therefore, in the physical composition of the forces.
The United Kingdom has backed this exercise throughout. We have not committed troops, I understand, in the Lebanon, but we have troops in the United Nations peacekeeping force in Cyprus. We have given money and logistic support and, as the hon. Member for Bexleyheath mentioned, we were instrumental in flying the Fijian troops into the Southern Lebanon to take part in the operation.
The question which now arises is this. What practical steps are the permanent members of the Security Council to take to ensure that the writ of the Security Council runs in the Southern Lebanon, that Israeli forces are totally withdrawn and that the obstruction and impeding of the United Nations operations under the Security Council cease? This is important. The hon. Gentleman very fairly and very reasonably set out certain technical and other problems relating to the creation, deployment, training and availability of United Nations forces. There was hardly anything in his speech with which I could disagree.
At the end of the day, however, there is also the political commitment particularly of the permanent members of the Security Council, without which no United Nations peacekeeping operation will be successful. The men on the ground and the countries contributing the troops on the ground have to be assured that those troops, operating in

the name of the international community, will carry the full support and backing of the international community if their work is in any way obstructed, impeded or made difficult.
As of this moment, as far as I can see, the permanent members of the Security Council have been deplorably slow and deplorably unready to spell out to Israel that it is the job of that country to co-operate fully with the United Nations operation in the Southern Lebanon, to cease its obstruction, to cease its connivance and conspiracy with the Fascist militia in that area and completely to withdraw from its unlawful occupation and operations in Lebanese territory.
What can the permanent members do? First, I think they should examine whether the strength of UNIFIL needs to be supplemented in any way. It was originally set at 4,000. It was subsequently increased to 6,000. If it is necessary, in the peculiarly difficult terrain and circumstances of that dangerous international border, to build it up to a greater level, I think it should be built up. The United Kingdom should say in the Security Council that the forces are not adequate for the particular difficulty of the situation, and the international community should be prepared to pay for an increased force if this is regarded as necessary.
It is scandalous that the United States should be promising massive supplies of arms to Israel while that country is defying the authority of the Security Council and harassing and obstructing the work of the UN peacekeeping operation. The United States, as the most powerful member of the Security Council, should at least say firmly to Israel that there will be no further supplies of arms, equipment and weapons until Israel ceases its obstruction of the work of the UN force, to which the United States was a party and which was set up on the political initiative of the United States.
Whether one should proceed to further forms of economic or diplomatic sanctions if Israel will not accept the ruling of the Security Council is a wider argument which I do not wish to pursue in this debate.
My argument is that the authority of the United Nations is at stake. The force


has been set up by resolution of the Security Council, it is financed by the international community, the men are there from a dozen member States of the UN, in some cases their lives are at risk in the operations that they are carrying out, and the least that the commander and the men can expect is full and unequivocal support from the great Powers, and particularly from the five permanent members of the Security Council, which undoubtely have it within their diplomatic and economic power to insist that Israel and the Fascist militia should cease impeding and obstructing the work of the UN force, which, after all, is in the interests of peace and security for the population of that part of the country and has the objective of restoring the authority of the lawful Government of Lebanon.
The cost of UNIFIL is not only a matter of dollars. Most of the French contingent have just returned home, but three members did not. They were killed during the operations. Another 12 were wounded. Other contingents have also suffered casualties. An article in The Times on 4 August 1978, written by Anthony Verrier, who was quoted by the hon. Member for Bexleyheath in a different context, said:
 Unifil does not execute its tasks without loss. The blinded, 20-year-old Nepalase soldier, lying silent in a Haifa hospital bed, a member of his section as silent by his side, victims of anti-personnel mines, is a telling reminder that Unifil was only welcomed by those who suffer in war.
That is part of the price of the operation. It is one of the reasons why it should be given full and unequivocal backing by the permanent members of the Security Council, of which the United Kingdom is one.

11.3 p.m.

Mr. Robert Rhodes James: The House is indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend) for having initiated the debate. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Mr. Hooley) sits on the Government Benches, but I hope that I may always call him my hon. Friend because we have done much work together for the United Nations. I regret that he spoke about the situation in the Middle East at a time when there is a gleam of hope that there may be a reasonable solution. I have great regard for the hon. Gentleman and I respect his sin-

cerity and the strength and consistency with which he has argued his case over the years, but I regret that his concluding words were unfortunate in present circumstances.
The hon. Gentleman and I are at least at one in believing in the United Nations as a remarkable human experiment and we know that the concept of UN peacekeeping has considerable potential, even though it also has weaknesses and difficulties. However, it is going a long way from acceptance of the principle and the achievements of the United Nations to move to arguments about the Fascist militia and so on, which do not help the United Nations and certainly do not help this nation in its attitude towards the future, and particularly towards the future of the United Nations.
I welcome very warmly the initiative of my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath in initiating the debate. I say with a personal interest, having been an official of the United Nations, as was the Under-Secretary in a previous incarnation, that I take some pride in the fact that the senior British official in charge of the United Nations peacekeeping operation is a British member of the secretariat, Mr. Urquhart, who joined the United Nations in 1946. He was the second person to do so, the first being the late Sir David Owen.
We have considerable reason to be proud that not only Sir David Owen and Brian Urquhart but many other British people have been involved in the United Nations, particularly in its peacekeeping operations. For that they have had precious little thanks from this House or from this country. It is important that some of us recognise the contribution they have made, and recognise, too, the importance of the contribution of UN peacekeeping work, which my hon. Friend so clearly, so strongly and so well emphasised.
My right hon. and hon. Friends and I have a profound and eternal commitment to the preservation of peace. We believe that that must be achieved through strength. We believe that its achievement in the world in which we live will be immensely difficult. We also believe that that peace will be preserved not only by our own strength and determination but by our membership of international organisations, of which


obviously NATO, the EEC, the Commonwealth and, less obviously to some people, the United Nations will be crucial.
My party is committed not just to membership of the UN and the other international organisations but to effective membership. One of the key decisions which this country will have to make over the next decade is whether we are to be real and determined members of international organisations or merely paper members. My right hon. and hon. Friends and I are determined that we shall be real members. We shall certainly be profoundly involved in the United Nations and its peacekeeping operations.
We must be realistic. We know that the UN peacekeeping operations have a limited value, limited resources and limited objectives. As one who at one stage dedicated his life to the United Nations, I am entitled to say that I believe deeply in the peacekeeping techniques and the operations. But I also recognise that one should not regard them as the answer to political problems which should be resolved by other means. It can be a help and it can, above all, buy time. That is certainly happening in the Middle East.
But the buying of time—we had bitter experience of this in Cyprus—can persuade politicians that there is no need for them to indulge in negotiations. Therefore, the strength and development of the UN peacekeeping forces can be a double-edged weapon. It is appropriate that this House and those concerned in these matters should not only recognise the value of the UN peacekeeping machine but should also recognise its deficiencies and weaknesses.
This is not a party political debate, and I hope that it never will be. I regret, however, that we are not in a position to give stronger support to the United Nations through our diminished defence resources. I regret that we are not able to help rather more than we could in the Lebanon. I regret that we are not in a position in the immediate future to give the kind of undertakings and assurances to the United Nations that we would wish, because our own defence situation is such that we are not in that position.
We shall always have to recognise that the nature of United Nations peacekeep-

ing is that each operation will be ad hoc, that each one has its own particular characteristics and that it is not possible to plan very far into the future beyond making certain general commitments, about which the Conservative Party would be very happy to join with the views expressed by the hon. Member for Heeley, which I am sure the Minister will endorse.
The fact is that particular situations and particular problems arise which are impossible to anticipate, and the fact that the United Nations operations have to be ad hoc and have to be particularly related to the problems is a fact that we shall have to continue to face.
However, in supporting the admirable speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath, for which we are all very grateful, and in thanking the hon. Member for Heeley for his contribution, I should like to emphasise that my party, and what I hope will be a future Conservative Government, wishes to support very strongly not only the United Nations and the concept of peacekeeping but the understanding that we believe that this nation has a role to play in the maintenance of peace in the world. That is a role which we wish to play, through the United Nations, through the Commonwealth and through any other organisation which is available.
Although there are obviously many things which separate the Opposition side of the House from the Government side, I hope that that thing will remain constant and that all will recognise that although an election is approaching, in which we may be obliged to say certain critical things about each other, one thing will come out clearly—that those of us who are responsible politicians wish to ensure the safety, the freedom and the peace of mankind.
We believe that the United Nations, for all its weaknesses, fallibilities and human deficiencies, remains one of those instruments through which that fragile peace might be maintained. We intend to do the best we can, through peacekeeping and other operations, to ensure that that peace may be maintained.
It is in that spirit that my hon. Friends and I support very strongly the particular proposal made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath.

11.13 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Evan Luard): The House should be grateful to the hon. Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend) and my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Mr. Hooley) for raising this important subject tonight. Many of us in the House believe that there is no more important task before this country and other countries than that of building up the United Nations. In that respect, we recognise the special importance of trying to improve and strengthen its peacekeeping capacity.
The emergence of peacekeeping forces represents perhaps one of the most important developments that has taken place on the international scene in recent years. Perhaps it is a pity that when we have debates on foreign affairs in this House our attention is so exclusively devoted to particular crisis situations in different parts of the world and we have little time to devote ourselves to general developments of this kind. Indeed, for my part, I think it is a pity that we never have whole debates which are devoted to such important topics as the United Nations and its various activities.
As many hon. Members know, there is a provision for peacekeeping in the United Nations charter. When the charter was formulated, when the United Nations was founded, hope was placed in a still more ambitious concept—the idea of enforcement action by armed force in order to keep the peace. There are certain articles of the charter—articles 42 to 50—which set out the way in which it was hoped that this might be done through the creation of a permanent force which would operate under the authority of the Security Council.
Unfortunately, that never came into being. Negotiations took place for the formation of such a force, but they rapidly broke down over questions such as the size of the force, the size of contributions by individual members, the location of the force and so on. By 1947, those negotiations had been abandoned.
Not long afterwards, in 1950, the Korean war broke out. That was the first occasion on which one might say that a form of United Nations force was established, although it was not a peacekeeping force within the meaning of that term today. That was enforcement action, and

only a small proportion of the membership of the United Nations contributed to the UN force in Korea. A large proportion of the then small membership of the UN at that time had no wish to contribute in that way.
At about the same time, the first beginnings of the UN's peacekeeping role could be discerned in various small-scale operations: by UNTSO—the United Nations Truce Supervisory Organisation—in the Middle East and by the UN Observer Force in Kashmir. But it was not until the time of the Suez operation—that misguided and ill-fated venture—that the first peacekeeping operation, in the proper sense of that term, was mounted. There was then a general feeling that what was required to meet the situation, in the aftermath of that adventure, was some form of international action rather than action by individual national forces or even a group of national forces.
It was remarkable that, in the course of a week or two weeks, agreement could be reached in the United Nations on the establishment of the first United Nations peacekeeping force. It was a remarkable feat of improvisation, in which Dag Hammarskjöld, the then secretary-general of the United Nations, played a major part. It established a precedent, which has since been followed on a number of occasions.
Peacekeeping forces since then have been established in New Guinea to supervise the evacuation of the Dutch, the Congo—the largest single peacekeeping operation—in the first place to supervise the evacuation of Belgian forces but increasingly to seek to pacify civil conflict in that country and to maintain its territorial integrity, and in Cyprus to keep the Greeks and Turks apart. More recently, three new forces have been established in the Middle East: in Sinai, on the Golan Heights and last year in Lebanon. We have had a remarkable succession of operations by the United Nations which add up to a considerable mass of activity.
In the early days, the forces were financed almost entirely by voluntary contributions. As my hon. Friend the Member for Heeley said, there was some controversy in earlier times about the way in which these forces were financed. As I mentioned, there is no provision in the charter for the establishment of such forces. Therefore, there was room for


controversy and disagreement on the subject. Unfortunately, many member States, including some permanent members of the Security Council, declined to take part in the financing of the early forces.
One significant advance has taken place in the last three or four years. With the establishment of the two forces in Sinai and Syria, there was a considerable degree of agreement on a new system of financing for these forces, under which all members of the UN would be assessed on a special scale—slightly different from that of the UN budget—which was more favourable to the developing countries. The financing of these forces, though not strictly on a regular budget, became part of the normal budgetary process of the United Nations. Unfortunately, that has not, as many of us hoped, altogether solved the problem—a few countries still persistently refuse to make the payments which they are due to make for the financing of these forces—but it has certainly reduced the problems.
Many of us will condemn those countries of the United Nations which often have shared in approving the establishment of a peacekeeping force and which certainly must share in the appreciation of the work such forces do but which none the less have persisted in declining to help to contribute to the financial cost. I hope that other members of the United Nations which are aware of the benefit that these forces bring will make their views known to those countries—such as the Communist countries but also others—which have persistently declined to help to contribute.
I was asked about our own role, particularly by the hon. Member for Bexley-heath. We have always taken a positive attitude to these operations. We have recognised that there are many situations—perhaps, in the modern world, an increasing number—in which there is a need for international action rather than competitive action by different nation States. This type of operation can help to avoid great Power involvement in particular situations and competition for influence, and can help to stabilise what might otherwise be very insecure situations.
Until fairly recently, there was a convention that permanent members did not

take part in these operations. That was already broken with the establishment of the Cyprus force in 1964, because Britain has played a leading role—perhaps the leading role—in that force from the beginning. We have also, of course, from the beginning played a prominent part in the financing of all these forces. We have not been among those who have refused to pay but we have consistently been one of the most generous providers of finance.
We have always reiterated our readiness to play a more active part. This positive attitude was most conspicuously reflected in the speech of my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary at the United Nations last year in which he expressed our readiness to play our part in future peacekeeping operations and committed us to contribute a battalion of our forces which would be ready at seven days' notice and which we would be prepared to commit for up to six months.
This positive approach to peace operations has also been shown by the degree of our involvement in such operations over the last year or so. As has been said, we have provided logistic support for the United Nations force in the Lebanon. We also helped to transport Fijian forces there and we have provided equipment for Fijian and Nepalese forces in Lebanon. In Namibia, where there have already been discussions about the establishment of UNTAG, we have offered to provide a signals unit and other assistance. We are still contributing 800 men to the UNFICYP, the United Nations force in Cyprus, after 15 years' involvement in that force.
There have often been proposals in the United Nations for putting peacekeeping operations on a more recognised and constitutionally based footing, given that there is no provision for such forces in the charter itself. Many people feel that there is a need for at least some body of principles to govern the operation of these forces. At present, there is a corpus of tradition only and there are no widely agreed principles which should be applied in these operations.
Many of us feel that, if it were possible to reach such an understanding about the principles to be used and the guidelines which should govern these operations.


it would be easier to secure agreement when new forces were proposed. I hope that there would then also be greater readiness on the part of the membership as a whole to pay for these forces. This has been recognised for some time, and it is for this reasoin that for 14 or 15 years a special committee on peacekeeping operations has been meeting and considering these questions.
The hon. Member for Bexleyheath tended to deprecate the committee's activities, which he felt had been totally unproductive. I cannot agree. We must remember that we are talking about matters on which members of the United Nations—in particular permanent members, the most important members—have been in great disagreement over many years. Those disagreements led in earlier times to the most bitter disputes in the United Nations history, including the crisis over financing of the forces, which led to an entire Assembly being wasted on one occasion.
Although it is true that the committee has still not reached agreement on the exact guidelines that should be provided, I think that it has gone some way to examine what the problems are and to reach a degree of consensus on a number of points. For example, there is now general agreement that it should normally be the Security Council that authorises the use of the forces. There is also genera! agreement about the new system of financing that I have described, and there is agreement on a number of other points. There is a whole set of principles, a number of which are already agreed.
It is true that there remain significant differences on certain points. As so often, these are the most important points—the system for the control of the forces, which has always been the most highly contested issue, and the relative role of the secretary-general and the Security Council in undertaking supervision of the forces' operations. I would not say that the committee's activities have been totally useless by any means.
However, peacekeeping operations do not require only principles; they also require hard cash. It is here that the present system leaves most to be desired. Everybody would agree that where a peacekeeping operation has been decided on by a great majority, sometimes even

unanimously, in the Security Council, there is at least an implicit obligation on all members of the United Nations to play their part in financing those operations.
Many of us deplore the fact that there are still member States refusing to pay their share for the operations. This has led to a serious financial problem for the United Nations, seriously affecting its capacity to make preparations for the United Nations operation in Namibia, which many of us fervently hope will shortly be put into effect. Unless all member States are more willing than they have shown themselves so far to participate in the financing of the operations, the United Nations' financial problems will become even worse than they are today.
I now turn to some of the more specific points that were put to me by the hon. Gentleman. He believed that there should be better organisation at United Nations headquarters for the management of the operations. One of the difficulties is that, as the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. Rhodes James) pointed out, so far all the operations have had to be organised very much on an ad hoc basis. There is no permanent system in the United Nations for maintaining a peacekeeping force There is a series of forces that have been set up in response to several immediate crises. The result is that the operations at the United Nations headquarters have always been of an improvised kind.
It may well be said that that in itself is undesirable, but it is not easy for the United Nations to take on a large staff for activities that cannot be anticipated. The hon. Member for Bexleyhealth will be glad to know that there has been a substantial strengthening of the headquarters staff in the United Nations responsible for the organisation and management of these operations, under the British senior member of the United Nations staff. Brian Urquhart, who has the ultimate responsibility under the secretary-general.
This follows the fact that we now have four United Nations peacekeeping operations in the field at the same time—something never known in the past—and at the same time there are intensive preparations for a large-scale operation in Namibia which will probably be second in size only to the operation in the Congo, which was so far the largest in United Nations history. These developments have made necessary a strengthening of the staff in


United Nations headquarters devoted to this sort of operation.
The hon. Gentleman addressed a number of questions to me about our own practice. He asked why we did not do more in the way of training our own forces for peacekeeping purposes. Again, I think he may be pleased to know that we do a considerable amount in this respect. Lectures and presentations on United Nations peacekeeping in theory and practice are included in the courses at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, and the Army Staff College, Camberley. In addition, the subject is covered in the progressive scheme of education for army officers.
In the context of higher defence training, United Nations peacekeeping features in the courses at both the National Defence College and the Royal College of Defence Studies, which are attended by officers of all three Services. General Rikhye, president of the International Peace Academy, which the hon. Member mentioned, said recently that he was delighted to hear of what was being done here by way of training studies in peacekeeping.
We believe that our present system of training gives adequate grounding in peacekeeping for officers and troops who might be engaged in United Nations operations, but the general question of training for peacekeeping operations is being kept under review.
The hon. Gentleman asked why there was no specialised manual for peacekeeping. But he himself mentioned the excellent"The Peacekeeper's Handbook ", and I endorse his commendation of Brigadier Harbottle, who was responsible for it. That handbook, as the hon. Gentleman knows, is used in a number of armed forces throughout the world, and it has proved invaluable for our own forces who have been engaged in operations of this kind.
Next, the hon. Gentleman asked about the International Peacekeeping Academy and wanted to know the British Government's attitude towards it. We have had extensive contacts with it. I myself know, I think, all those who have been actively engaged at the head of that organisation. When they come to London, they usually come to see me or one of my right hon.

or hon. Friends. Members of our Foreign Office staff have taken part in seminars which it has organised.
We should welcome the setting up of an office in London, which, I believe, the academy has had in mind. I am afraid that I can make no commitment about financial assistance towards the setting up of such an office, but we are always ready to consider suggestions which are made in this respect, and we have already had discussions on the subject.
The hon. Gentleman asked whether we would have forces ready for service at any moment. He mentioned what my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said in New York last autumn. Would we, the hon. Gentleman asked, have a particular unit ready for service at any moment? That, of course, would involve what is often called the earmarking of a particular force. People often talk about earmarking in this context, and it is true that some nations earmark particular units. But I put to the hon. Gentleman that it is not necessarily the most rational way to tackle the problem.
What is important from the United Nations point of view is to know that when it is in need and it undertakes a particular operation it can call on a nation and know that forces will be provided. This is what we have offered. We have made a commitment that when such a call is made, and there is no pressing national commitment which would make it impossible, we should provide a force of a certain size and kind within a certain time.
I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that that is what is most important to the United Nations, and it is not necessarily rational to keep one particular unit twiddling its thumbs for years on end waiting for a peacekeeping operation to turn up. It is better to do it the way we have, allowing the rotation of forces. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have many commitments for our forces in different parts of the world. As long as we know that there is always one which will be available at any moment to help the United Nations, this, surely, is what is most required.
The hon. Gentleman asked what help we would give to UNTAG the United Nations operation in Namibia. We have been in close contact with the United


Nations itself about what it requires, and we have had a considerable number of communications on the subject. We have offered a signals unit and one or two other particular kinds of capacity for which the United Nations has made requests.
I stress, however, that we are still only in a preliminary stage of the Namibia operation. We do not know for certain whether it will get off the ground. The United Nations requirements may change before it comes into being. But I can say that we hope to play an active and useful part in that operation.
I agree that Vice-President Mondale should be applauded for his suggestion at the United Nations special session on disarmament that there should be a peacekeeping reserve. Most of us feel that it would be invaluable for the United Nations if it knew that a reserve was always available at a moment's notice. Some countries have earmarked forces which, in a sense, form part of such a reserve. Our offer, although it does not represent earmarked forces, enables us to say that we have a battalion which is available to take part in such a reserve.

Mr. Townsend: I am grateful to the Minister for his detailed reply. What is the Government's attitude to UN peacekeeping in Rhodesia? Does he envisage that a British battalion will be sent there as part of a UN mission? What would be the task of such a unit in Rhodesia?

Mr. Luard: There has been some misunderstanding about this. When my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary made his offer to the United Nations last autumn, he did not make it in reference to any particular situation in any part of the world, whether in Rhodesia or anywhere else. In some quarters my right hon. Friend's statement was misinterpreted. We have no idea whether there will be a UN operation in Rhodesia or whether Britain will be requested to play a part in it. Of course, if such a request is made, we shall try to respond as best we can in the form requested. I hope that there will be a UN force in Rhodesia in the not too distant future. I hope that we shall be able to play a part in it. I cannot say more than that now.
I turn to the questions raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Heeley. When the United Nations force in Leba-

non was established by the Security Council a year ago, following the Israeli invasion of South Lebanon, we took a prominent part in securing the establshment of the force and we have given it our full support ever since. We have looked to it to act as a peacekeeping force in the area and to pave the way for the re-establishment of Lebanese Government authority there.
We have been able to give concrete assistance through the provision of logistic facilities from Cyprus. The force has, on the whole, performed its task with commendable efficiency and it has been able to restore a large degree of normality to the area in which it has operated. We are grateful to those countries which have contributed forces towards it.
But we share my hon. Friend's regret that UNIFIL has been prevented from deploying fully throughout the area laid down in the mandate because of the lack of co-operation from de facto armed Christian groups in the area. As my hon. Friend said, the UN secretary-general has drawn attention to this lack of co-operation in successive reports. He has expressed serious concern about the unprecedented obstruction of a United Nations peacekeeping force. He has said that he fears that unless the situation improves, the very existence of UNIFIL could be threatened.
The British Government share that concern. We have made our views clear. We supported the Security Council resolution of September 1978, when the mandate was first renewed, which appealed to all concerned to co-operate fully with UNIFIL. In December, when the council met to review the position, our view was that there was no excuse for the lack of co-operation with the UN peacekeeping force and that the Israeli Government, which had substantial influence over some of the groups, had a considerable responsibility. We joined in approving a statement by the president of the Security Council which called on those not co-operating with UNIFIL to desist immediately from interfering with the force's operations.

Mr. Rhodes James: Does the Minister accept that one of the deep problems in the Lebanon is that there are no fewer than eight Palestinian groups involved, with no single Palestinian negotiator? Without derogating from the


point the Minister is making, may I ask whether he does not agree that the position of the United Nations and the Israelis became almost impossible because there was no one element with which negotiations could be held and which could be described as representing the Palestinian cause?

Mr. Luard: We continually called for co-operation with the United Nations force from all quarters. The hon. Gentleman must be aware that the main concern of the United Nations has not been with the Palestinians in Southern Lebanon but with the so-called de facto Christian forces, and in particular with the help they have been given by the Israeli Government. That has been expressed in successive United Nations Security Council resolutions.

Mr. Hooley: Is it not clear from the secretary-general's reports—I refrained from making even longer quotations from them—that, although there have been incidents and clashes with some of the Palestinian forces, in general there has been no serious problem with them? The problem has arisen with what have been called the de facto Lebanese forces, the militia, and through the lack of co-operation from the Israeli side. The secretary-general makes this perfectly clear. There have been incidents, but there has been no serious problem with the Palestinians.

Mr. Luard: I would not go so far as to say that there had been no problems with Palestinians, certainly not in the early stages of UNIFIL's operations in Southern Lebanon. It is true to say that in recent times the problems have been almost entirely with the Haddad forces and with the help they have been given from outside Lebanon.
I was saying that the British Government joined in approving a statement by the president of the Security Council calling on those not co-operating with UNIFIL to desist immediately from interfering with the force's operations. We have also responded to the secretary-general's request that members of the Security Council should use their influence with all parties involved in South Lebanon to secure compliance with UN resolutions. I regret to say that the de facto forces have continued to harass

UNIFIL in its efforts to implement its mandate.
In January of this year the Security Council again considered the renewal of UNIFIL's mandate. We supported the resulting resolution, No. 444, which renewed the mandate for five months and called upon all concerned to give their full co-operation to UNIFIL. The resolution also called for a new and determined effort to extend the presence of the Lebanese Government, civilian as well as military, into the South. This resolution, too, has been ignored. Harassment continues and the Lebanese Government, apart from attaching a small number of liaison officers to the UNIFIL zone, have been unable to extend their presence significantly.
We are deeply concerned by these developments. This refusal to co-operate with the peacekeeping force of the United Nations threatens the fragile equilibrium in which Lebanon now survives. If UNIFIL cannot fulfil its mandate, it will be difficult for it to continue. Its disappearance would have serious consequences, not only for peace in the area but for the prestige and authority of the UN.
I take this opportunity once again to appeal to the de facto forces to cease their harassment of UNIFIL, which is particularly disturbing when there are some Lebanese national forces coming to the area, seeking to re-establish the authority of the Lebanese Government. It seems particularly unjustifiable that this Lebanese force, whose leader was at one time a member of the regular Lebanese forces, should be continuing to obstruct the attempt to restore a normal situation in Southern Lebanon. I hope, too, that Palestinian units in the area will refrain from attacks on Israel from across the Lebanese border.
I would like to express, on behalf of the British Government, our deep gratitude for the efforts of the secretary-general and his staff and, above all, the troops who make up UNIFIL. They are performing a thankless job with distinction in the most difficult circumstances. They deserve our full support and they have the British Government's unqualified support. We shall continue to take every


available opportunity to demonstrate our concern and to use our influence to ease their task and help to maintain peace in the area in which they operate.
I hope that I have answered fully most of the points made in this short debate. I should like to repeat how glad I am that the opportunity was taken to raise this question. I only wish that we devoted more time in the House to these vitally important matters concerning not merely individual questions but the whole development of the United Nations and its capacity to confront more effectively all the difficult, dangerous and warlike situations that still occur, I regret, in so many parts of the world.

MERSEYSIDE (GOVERNMENT AID)

11.47 p.m.

Mr. Eric Ogden: I ask the House to accept that at this time of night we do not have the fullest possible attendance in the Chamber, but in the Chair itself, on the Front Benches and on the Back Benches we have quality. That praise may be some reward for those hon. Members who have stayed here at this hour.
We are technically debating the Second Reading of the Consolidated Fund (No. 2) Bill, a simple three-clause Bill which will provide a further sum of £29½ million for the year ending 31 March 1978 and a further sum of almost £578 million for the year ending 31 March 1979. Those are very large sums of money. I make no complaint about that. I believe in public expenditure, public services and Government support for both public and private enterprise.
One word in the preamble to this short, three-clause, one-page Bill does, however, cause me some concern. The preamble reads:
 We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom in Parliament assembled, towards making good the supply which we have cheerfully granted.
I would suggest to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary and to the parliamentary draftsmen that the word"cheerfully"is at least inaccurate and at best an overstatement. It is mis-terminology rather than terminology.
We have many informed debates in this Chamber about the desirability of parliamentary control and scrutiny of Government expenditure. Parliament has greatly increased the degree of accountability of Governments to Parliament in this regard over the past years. We ought to continue so to do. But we should recognise that Parliament, or Members of Parliament or Select Committees, cannot control every item of public expenditure. We are parliamentarians, not auditors. We have to rely on the honesty, ability, integrity and dedication of many men and women in all Departments of Government to do the greater part of that task for us.
The most careful scrutiny that I have been able to undertake of this massive 500-page tome of Supplementary Estimates and most, if not all, of my experience in this place over 14 years—it may seem longer to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary—have satisfied me that the standards and ability of British civil servants in this regard are the best in the world. Civil servants have to accept much unfair and unfounded criticism. I want to put on record my praise of them. I also want to put on record that I want nothing from them in any shape or form, at least tonight.
My main purpose is to refer to parts of these Supplementary Estimates. Class IV, vote 6, page 115, dealing with general support for industry, amounts to £1,552,242,000. That is an enormous sum. I shall also refer to page 195, Class VIII, vote 1, regional support and regeneration, £13 million; page 196, other local services, derelict land, £12 million; and page 199, urban programme. I shall ask for information in as much detail as possible on Government selective assistance to industry in connection with inner city schemes on Merseyside, especially within Liverpool.
I am grateful that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Industry has undertaken to answer my inquiries My hon. Friend has a special knowledge of Merseyside. He knows the needs, abilities, difficulties, opportunities and successes of Merseyside. His visits to and stays on Merseyside have been frequent and formal and frequent and informal. Only a few days ago he was on Merseyside making a formal visit. At the end of the official part of his visit, he took extra


time in the evening to visit my Labour clubs in Dovecot and Gillmoss and went on to Walton, Garston, Huyton and many other areas. He likes to know what is going on. That is not because he does not trust his civil servants but becauase he likes to check for himself. He wants to know the feelings and opinions of others.
I understand that if it were not for my request that my hon. Friend should answer my inquiries, he would now be back in his constituency of Nuneaton meeting his constituents or on his way home. I apologise to him and his constituents. I hope that it will be appreciated that their temporary loss is my gain.
In view of the real knowledge and experience that my hon. Friend has of Mer-seyside, I have no real reason to go into detail. I do not have to spell out where an area is. I do not have to remind him of the names of companies. I have no need to spell out in great detail the points that I wish to make.
My hon. Friend knows that Mersey-side grew from and around the docks. He knows the changes that have taken place over the past years. There has been the change from sea passenger transport to air passenger transport. There was a time when one could take one's manservant, butler or even a lady's maid to the Adelphi hotel in the centre of Liverpool and when the groom had to go to a smaller hotel down the road. I never had a manservant, butler or groom, although that should have been the style to which the hon. Member for North Fylde (Mr. Clegg) and I were accustomed. However, that was the style of Mersey-side in the heyday and height of the great sea passenger transport across the Atlantic.
Sea transport changed to air transport. Bulk loose cargo handling changed to container traffic. The tremendous cotton and wool imports into Lancashire, which my hon. Friend understands full well, changed to man-made fibres produced in Lancashire. That clearly had an effect on trade.
My hon. Friend knows of the technological, social and economic changes that have had an effect on Merseyside. He knows, too, that the oil crises and the

slump in world trade have caused major manufacturing concerns, whose main base was and is in the Midlands and the South-East, to rationalise and reorganise. The Merseyside parts of those organisations have been cut back or closed, in spite of the aid that the Labour Government have provided and in spite of the aid, to a much lesser degree, that the Conservative Government provided.
The rationalisations, contractions and closures have taken place in spite of Government aid and not because of any lack of Government aid. We have difficulties with Dunlop, Plessey, Western Shiprepairers Ltd. and other companies. Part of the problem is that Liverpool is news. Unfortunately, on too many occasions, both outside and inside this place, bad news is news on the front page as part of the six o'clock headlines whereas good news gets half a column-inch on the back page. That is one difficulty we must try to overcome.
Merseyside has received, is receiving and, under a Labour Government, will continue to receive massive financial support for industry, housing, the inner areas and the public services. Partnership schemes in the inner city areas are the best possible example of co-operation between local organisations, city and district councils, county councils and the Labour Government. Such aid not only goes to housing and social services, and to industry, large and small, in the inner areas, but has brought considerable benefit to urban areas.
Unfortunately, Liverpool council is now under Liberal and Conservative control and is not as active or effective as it should be. Let me give two examples. My hon. Friend the Minister knows the housing needs of Merseyside. However, Liverpool corporation was £3 million underspent on its housing estimates last year. What happens in that situation? Along comes the Department of Employment and says"You have unemployed joiners, builders, plasterers and workers of all kinds. Here is £3 million "—exactly the same sum as was underspent—" to provide work for Merseyside people and to cope with £40,000-worth of housing repair work."
The chairman of the Liverpool corporation housing committee, Mr. Alton, happens to be running in the Edge Hill by-election on the simple platform of


housing. I think he has a tremendous cheek—" gall"might be a better word—but the people of Edge Hill will decide his fate in the near future.
We have unemployed teachers in the area and the education department is underspent on its current account. Liberal-Conservative control—mainly through Liberal misguidance rather than Conservative actions—has been a disaster for Merseyside. But in many other areas we are doing a great deal to help ourselves to improve employment, housing, and other aspects of life on Merseyside.
The list of such help is too long to mention in this short debate. However, I need only mention Government support for industry, investment in the Giro, and the Civil Service Bureau. Other action has come in terms of Tate &Lyle, Meccano—where I almost took up residence for three weeks in seeking to assist the position—and in a company which belongs to the Imperial Tobacco group and whose name I cannot mention but which happens to be the same as mine. There have also been the offer to Dunlop and the investment in Vauxhall. In all those spheres there has been public investment—which means public support for employment, training opportunities and many other matters.
The difficulty is that too often Merseyside Labour Members are called in to try to save employment in a factory when nearly all the decisions have been taken. We act as visiting firemen rather than prevention officers. We undertake rescue operations rather than preventive measures. It is not the role of hon. Members to do the job of management or of trade unions. Because of these crises and constant alarms, we are too often not able to recall the tremendous amount of aid and assistance that has been provided by the Government in certain areas. We become so involved in other people's problems that we overlook such help.
We are both a service area and a manufacturing area. Our history has been as a service area. We now have, and have had for some time, the complementary support of major industry—some in our own factories and some in others. In my view, however, the future of Merseyside will depend on more assistance for the service areas while we try to maintain the level of support for the manufacturing areas.
Merseyside people are busy, lively and extremely hard-working. We have tried to help ourselves in every possible way—not by putting our hands in anybody else's kitty, but by playing our part in our own future. We shall continue to need public investment and support on Merseyside. It is a fact that the other political parties on Merseyside are commited to reductions in public expenditure. I want my hon. Friend the Minister tonight to remind everybody how much aid we receive every day and in every way from a Labour Government.

12 midnight

The Under-Secretary of State for Industry (Mr. Les Huckfield): My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Ogden) need not apologise to me or the House for raising the subject of Government assistance to Merseyside. This is not the first time that he and I have debated this subject, and unfortunately it is not the first time that such a debate has been at this hour of the night.
My hon. Friend made a cogent case tonight. I recognise that he knows his constituency well and that his constituents know and respect him for the ardent and diligent work that he does on their behalf. The vein in which he has spoken and the way in which he has put his points tonight illustrate his pursuit of the aspirations and needs of the people whom he represents. That is why I am pleased to go into detail in answering his points.
The Government are very much aware of the problems which my hon. Friend has so ably described. I assure him that we shall continue to do all we can to tackle them and do something about solving them. My hon. Friend is right when he says that without a Labour Government Liverpool's many problems would have been a great deal worse. Without our measures, unemployment would have been far worse, although I appreciate that that is small consolation to the many thousands who are still unemployed in Liverpool.
Within a few months of coming into office, in August 1974, this Government made Merseyside a special development area. This means that firms investing there can qualify for the maximum amount of the Government's regional incentives, including regional development grants,


regional selective assistance and Government factories, at the highest rates available in Great Britain. The advantages of Merseyside to industry and the incentives on offer there are well publicised. The Department of Industry runs extensive publicity campaigns both at home and abroad to persuade firms to set up in the assisted areas, and especially in the special development areas such as Merseyside.
The industrial development certificate control is a valuable instrument for steering industry to the areas of most need. Between March 1972, when the scheme started, and 30 September 1978, about £175 million worth of regional development grants has gone to firms in the Merseyside SDA.
Under this Government, offers of £60·1 million in regional selective assistance have been made in respect of 339 projects in Merseyside, costing in total £409·2 million. It is estimated that this will create 22,600 new jobs in the area and safeguard a further 21,800 jobs. Within inner Liverpool, offers of £8·8 million in regional selective assistance have been made for 75 projects, costing in total more than £43 million. It is estimated that this will create 2,552 new jobs in the area and safeguard a further 3,934 jobs.
Within Edge Hill, £787,500 has been offered to Meccano Ltd. for a project with a total investment cost of £4·2 million, in conjunction with assistance from the city council to keep Meccano from moving to a green field site, with the loss of 750 jobs to inner Liverpool. Regional selective assistance offered to Imperial Tobacco, to maintain 600 jobs, should also do much to aid employment prospects in Edge Hill.
Merseyside is one of the chief beneficiaries from the advance factory programme, with 123 units authorised since March 1974, providing more than 1 million sq. ft. of floor space. These are expected to provide, when fully occupied, 4,800 jobs. Of these, 59 units amounting to 484,000 sq. ft. have been completed. Merseyside took the lion's share of the most recent programme commencing last August. Of this total, 37 units have been authorised for the inner Liverpool partnership area, providing nearly 300,000 sq. ft. of floor space, half of which is complete or under construction. I shall gave

my hon. Friend some further details about the exact location of these advance factories in a few minutes.
Altogether, it is estimated that the Government spent £346 million in regional preferential financial assistance for industrial development in the Merseyside area between the 1972–73 and 1977–78 financial years, most of it falling in the latter years. When compared on a per capita basis, the Merseyside special development area compares very favourably with other assisted areas in Great Britain.
Up to the end of September 1978, the European regional development fund contributed £11·6 million towards the cost of projects located in the Merseyside special development area. Of this amount, £5·1 million related to 55 industrial projects or Government advance factories and £6·5 million was in respect of 102 infrastructure projects.
Nor must we forget the dispersal of Government work from London, especially to Merseyside. Since 1973,1,260 Civil Service posts have been dispersed to Merseyside. Under the Hardman dispersal programme, Merseyside was to benefit from 3,250 posts over the next five years. It has been agreed that 1,000 posts in the Health and Safety Executive will be transferred to Merseyside. There will also be 1,250 posts for the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, 500 posts for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and 1,000 posts for the Home Office, all at the Exchange station site in inner Liverpool. These are the areas about which my hon. Friend expressed concern. In addition, as a result of the Government's policy to set up new work away from London whenever possible, 1,780 posts have been established in the Merseyside SDA and up to 502 more are planned to be set up there. These include the Customs and Excise VAT enforcement centre in Liverpool.
Service grants—in which my hon. Friend has a special interest—are available under section 7 of the Industry Act 1972 to service industry firms moving to, setting up or expanding in the assisted areas. To qualify, firms must have a genuine choice of location between those areas and elsewhere and provide a minimum of 10 jobs. The grants favour the special development areas such as Merseyside, where firms may qualify for assistance of up to £4,000 per job. From


March 1974 up to 31 December 1978, 27 offers, totalling £4·5 million and involving 2,000 jobs, were made under this scheme to firms in Merseyside. The progress of the scheme is under review. The grants were increased in 1976 and it is likely that further substantial increases will arise from the current review. In addition, in the inner city districts designated under the Inner Urban Areas Act local authorities can use the Act to offer assistance to service industries on the same basis as to manufacturing concerns.
But the future of Merseyside is closely allied to the success achieved by the Government's efforts to promote industrial development nationally through the industrial strategy. In support of the strategy, assistance is available to help modernise and regenerate companies under section 8 of the Industry Act 1972. From March 1974,53 projects costing over £36 million have been offered assistance amounting to £3·7 million. In the inner Liverpool areas, 23 projects, costing over £1·3 million, have been offered assistance of £211,000.
The National Enterprise Board, of course, plays a fundamental part in the Government's industrial strategy. Its North-West regional board, based in Merseyside, is there to invest in firms with suitable plans and prospects, although, of course, its rate of investment is governed by what opportunities come forward to it. There is no limit within the NEB's overall budget to the amount that can be spent either in the North-West in general or in Merseyside in particular.
The NEB is required by its guidelines to pay particular attention to areas of high unemployment. In Merseyside, Hemmings Plastics has already been assisted by the NEB's funds, and the area derives considerable benefit from investments such as that in the British Leyland plant at Speke. I very much hope—no doubt my hon. Friend will convey this to his constituents—that many more firms in Merseyside will come forward to discuss possible investment with the NEB's regional office in Liverpool. It is a matter of the NEB and firms getting together. I hope that my hon. Friend will do all he can to encourage that getting together.
It is vital to create a climate in which small firms can thrive, and I say that

wearing my small firms hat in the Department of Industry. Much of the factory building in Merseyside by the Department of Industry is directed specifically at small firms, and the inner city partnership committee has their needs very much in mind.
There is also a small firms information centre in Liverpool run by my Department, and our small firms counselling service gives small firms locally the opportunity to discuss their problems with experienced business men. Up to January this year, the centre handled nearly 3,500 inquiries. The committee to review the functioning of financial institutions, which is chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Huyton (Sir H. Wilson), has today published an interim report making a number of thought-provoking recommendations on small firms. Indeed, his own efforts are a very good example of Liverpool industry. Together with my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, I shall be responding to some of those points tomorrow—or, rather, later today. The Government are giving those recommendations the fullest consideration, and we shall be responding in greater detail in due course.
Apart, however, from the measures which have been designed to help small firms, particularly those carried out by the small firms division of my Department, I want to tell my hon. Friend something about the special temporary employment measures, because some of the things that I have been talking about so far, although they are designed to help create further employment opportunities and safeguard existing jobs through industrial expansion, may take time.
To help mitigate the worst effects of the very high level of unemployment to which my hon. Friend has referred, caused by the current recession, the Government have introduced, as he knows, several special employment schemes, such as the temporary employment subsidy and the job creation programme. On Merseyside, in total such measures have assisted 56,099 workers. That is a very large number of workers who would not be in a job now if it were not for these measures, or whose jobs have certainly benefited in the past by those special temporary employment measures.
The temporary employment scheme is to close for applications on 31 March 1979 and will be replaced by the new


scheme to support short-time working as an alternative to redundancies. This will have particular significance in Merseyside, and the new scheme will operate until the Government's proposals for a statutory scheme to support short-time working have been implemented.
Merseyside benefits, as my hon. Friend has pointed out, from the Government's inner city policy. Liverpool is one of the few cities with a partnership under the Government's inner city policy. The partnership committee, as I know my hon. Friend recognises, comprises the relevant Government Ministers and members of the local authorities concerned. The Liverpool one is chaired by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment. The partnership committees, particularly the Liverpool one, have as their top priority the regeneration of the economy of their areas.
I am a member of the Liverpool partnership committee, and at the meeting I attended last week, on 5 March, we agreed to set up a meeting of officials to carry forward the consideration of the proposals in the report by PA Management Consultants Ltd., relating to the co-ordination of industrial promotion in the area. That was a significant report, to which my hon. Friend has referred previously. The House will recall that this report on the attraction of industry to inner Merseyside was specially commissioned by the Department of Industry. The Government gave their speedy response to the report in August and we want to see some of its recommendations carried into practice.
The partnership committee is there to co-ordinate action for tackling the problems of the area. It has drawn up a programme of action which is being implemented. The partnership area will receive £11 million under the inner city construction package in the period up to March 1979, a further £2½ million from the urban programme and, afterwards, £10 million per annum from the programme.
I want to give my hon. Friend some examples to give him the flavour of the sort of thing that I am talking about. The construction package included assistance for 75 factory units for small firms

providing 212,000 sq. ft. of floor space. Let me give some examples, including the Edge Hill advance factory units, which cost £306,000, the Bourne Street advance factory units, costing £213,000—also in the Edge Hill area—and the Jamaica Street-Jordan Street units, which cost £314,000. In addition, the construction package included money for roads and services In Erskine Street and Islington—a total of £735,000, again in the Edge Hill area—and there have been adaptations to the Chatsworth primary school, at a cost of £205,000. The provision of the all-weather pitch at the Butler Street primary school at a cost of £50,000, improvements to the Pickton sports centre costing £25,000, and the rehabilitation of sewers in Erskine Street at a cost of £70,000 were all provided under the urban programme in 1978–79 and proposals are being considered for the full-scale development of the Erskine Street site by means of joint funding by the urban programme, the community land scheme and derelict land grant resources.
I hope that, having been given the flavour and details of the projects, my hon. Friend will convey to his constituents what the Government are trying to do for their futures, their lives and their environment.
Further industrial schemes will be undertaken in the implementation of the partnership's first inner area programme. The partnership has identified as its overriding objectives
 the economic, social and environmental regeneration of Liverpool.
The programme contains urban programme projects aimed at economic regeneration totalling more than £12 million during the three years 1979 to1981 which it covers. These include the acquisition and servicing of industrial sites, the construction of advance factory units and the payment of loans and grants to firms under the Inner Urban Areas Act.
The local authorities in other designated areas have increased powers to assist industry under the Inner Urban Areas Act 1978. Wirral, as a programme authority, has powers under the Act and an allocation of £1½ million in 1979–80 from the urban programme, with more in subsequent years. Sefton and St. Helens are also designated under the Act. I give those examples because I


do not want my hon. Friend to conclude that all our assistance has gone to inner areas or that it had gone to inner areas to the detriment of the outer areas. We have been trying to help the outer areas as well.
The whole of the special development area qualifies for the maximum levels of regional assistance. Examples such as GEC-Fairchild and GEC-Schreiber testify to our efforts to steer projects to Merseyside as a whole.
Merseyside also receives substantial assistance from other Government expenditure programmes, on, for example, housing and roads. In the 1978–79 and 1979–80 financial years, more than £84 million has been allocated under the housing investment programme and more than £28 million allocated in grants under the transport supplementary grant.
My hon. Friend referred in his speech to the port of Liverpool. A healthy port contributes, of course, to the local economy. The port exists to handle freight and passenger traffic and has to respond to demand. Investment in port facilities has to depend on the demand for port services.
The Mersey Docks and Harbour Company has asked for Government aid for restructuring the port. Although there have been a number of representations in support of that request from hon. Members and others, the Government cannot consider giving special assistance to the port of Liverpool until the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company has provided a detailed assessment of its trading and financial position and prospects. I understand that the company is working on this and may be able to make a submission before very long. I and my right hon. and hon. Friends look forward to receiving that submission.
Our concern for Merseyside's problems should not lead us to talk the area down. I am well aware that by talking about the problems we can sometimes harm an area rather than improve its prospects. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for West Derby referred to the brighter, more progressive, more positive side of the case. Certainly, a doom-laden over-pessimistic note can only deter the industry that Merseyside so badly needs.
I have tried to give the figures tonight, but my hon. Friend knows that there have

been redundancies. They should not blind us to the significant successes of the area. These have been achieved through such firms as GEC-Fairchild, creating over 1,000 jobs at Neston in the technology of microelectronics, and Ford, which is investing in the United Kingdom some £1,000 million, part of which will fall to its plant at Halewood. I have mentioned GEC-Schreiber, which is creating 1,000 jobs at Runcorn. ICI and Shell have major chemical and petrochemical developments under way at Runcorn, Widnes and Ellesmere Port. UKF fertilisers is investing £25 million at Ince, Cross International is investing £2·6 million at Knowsley and YKK Fasteners is undertaking a continual programme of investment and recruitment at Runcorn. These are helping the Mersey-side economy as a whole, and I know that my hon. Friend will relate those facts back to his constituents.
Given successes of this kind as a foundation on which to build, and given the incentives, the will and the co-operation which I know exist, I believe that Mersey-side can emerge from many of its problems and stand ready to take advantage of an upturn in the national economy. The Government will do all they can to help. I know that my hon. Friend and his constituents want to help. I believe that he has conveyed very accurately their aspirations and hopes for the future. It is in the spirit of that hope for the future that I have been trying to respond. I hope that I have given my hon. Friend some hope and some message that he can take back to his constituents.

FLOOD AND STORM EMERGENCY RELIEF

12.23 a.m.

Mr. Walter Clegg: Good morning, Mr. Speaker. I am sorry to keep the Minister out of his bed at this unreasonable hour, but I am sure that he accepts that this is one of the hazards of his job. I can hardly conceive of a Consolidated Fund Bill debate going by without the Minister being involved, given the nature of his Department.
I am raising a debate on storm and flood emergency services for a simple reason. In November 1977, due to a high tide backed up by gale-force winds, parts


of my constituency were extensively flooded. I was able to see at first hand all the miseries, problems and loss that that flooding caused.
I want to try in this debate to draw from that experience some lessons which could be of value not only to my constituency but to other areas which could face a similar situation. It is worth remembering that until the Thames barrage is completed the Palace of Westminster is very much at risk from flooding after a surge up the Thames from the North Sea. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Winchester (Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles) has just asked me whether we shall all know what to do when we hear the siren. I hope that it is a sound that we shall never hear, at least until the barrage is completed.
I am not out to score any party points tonight, because I believe that the situation is too serious to take a partisan point of view. My first point is a general one, but it is well illustrated by what happened in North Fylde. The reality is that there is no one Department of State responsible for sea defences in their entirety. As I understand it, the responsibility is shared between the Department of the Environment and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. The DOE has a responsibility where there is a question of coastal erosion, while if there is a question of flooding the responsibility is that of the Ministry of Agriculture.
That, however, is not quite the end of the matter. If coastal erosion is involved, the local authority concerned is the district council, but if flood protection is involved the water authority for the particular area is responsible. I can illustrate this from what happened in North Fylde in the floods of November 1977.
When the sea overwhelmed the wall at Fleetwood and Cleveleys, the direct responsibility for coping with the situation lay on the Wyre borough council, whereas on the same night, when the sea came through the sea wall in the Over Wyre area the responsibility there was that of the North-West water authority. This meant that in the same district two authorities were having to cope with flood situations. If one adds to that the fact that the police, fire and ambulance services are under the control of Lanca-

shire county council, it can be seen very clearly that responsibility is diffused. In the immediate aftermath of the storm, I found that it was difficult at times to find out who was doing what and where from.
Therefore, there is good reason to look at the present situation, in which two Government Departments, two local authorities and a water authority are concerned not only with coping with a flood situation but with preventing one arising.
At present, I understand that in my constituency the Wyre borough council is pressing ahead as fast as it can with proposals to strengthen the sea walls at Fleetwood and Cleveleys, while on the other bank of the River Wyre the North-West water authority is planning to rebuild the sea wall to protect Preesall and Pilling. The Wyre borough council has to look to the DOE for finance and for approval of its schemes, while the North-West water authority has to look to the Ministry of Agriculture. I feel that there are dangers in this division of responsibility and authority. The Government should look at this matter with urgency.
Finally on this point, so complex is the situation that at one part of my constituency, Spring Bank on the eastern bank of the River Wyre, erosion is taking place for which no one seems to be responsible. The Wyre borough council declines responsibility. The county council and the North-West water authority decline responsibility. It seems, therefore, that although the parish council is desperately concerned lest the erosion should lead to flooding, no one is taking up the question of what should happen at this particular point. I understand that the matter is outside the terms of the Coast Protection Act, so it is not the responsibility of the DOE.
I now turn to one of the great fears which I found following the flood—the fear of its happening again. This was and still is a very real fear. Every time there is a high tide accompanied by gale-force winds, many of my constituents are in dread of what may happen. There can be only one answer to this problem. That is that the sea defences should be made as secure as possible. There must be the right answer and the answer which, in the long run, will be the most cost-effective. If floods can be prevented, Estimates such


as that which we are discussing will not be necessary.
I understand that the Wyre borough council is pressing ahead as fast as it can to strengthen the sea walls at Cleveleys and Fleetwood, and, as I have said, at Over Wyre the North-West water authority is doing the same thing. The sooner this work is done, the better, and the sounder will my constituents sleep in their beds. I hope that the two Ministers concerned will do their best to see that the authorities involved are given all the help and Government grants that can be given.
Improving the sea defences is the prime objective, but it is equally important that preparations should be made in the event of flooding occurring. The Wyre borough council has set up a special committee to study the problems of emergency action and the co-ordination of all the various factors to which I have referred. It has also had talks with many people, including the Fleetwood Flood Association. I believe that clear contingency plans should be made. I hope that the experience of the 1977 flooding will lead to more effective methods of dealing with such a situation again.
I ask the Minister to urge his Department and the Ministry of Agriculture. Fisheries and Food to look at contingency planning in co-operation with local authorities at places where there is a risk of flooding. There are difficult problems to resolve—for example, the giving of early warnings. If these are given too often—if"Wolf"is cried too often—and nothing happens, early warnings will be deprived of being effective when the real emergency occurs. There is much to be be done to co-ordinate these efforts.
I have a strong feeling that natural disasters in this country are treated on an ad hoc basis. The Minister of State, Department of the Environment has the most remarkable powers for conjuring up rain or dissolving snow, but that is not enough.
I was often asked, during the flooding in 1977, whether I could get the area declared as a disaster area. That phrase has often been used on television. As far as I know, we have no method or system for declaring a place as a disaster area. But a possible mode of approach to the problem is to have some special disaster procedure.
I turn now to the question of financial help and compensation in the wake of a flood. I found the situation very complex. I understand that a local authority has power to make grants from its own resources for uninsurable losses, but not for losses which could have been insured beforehand. If a local authority spends more than a penny rate in this way, the Government have discretion to help. In fact, they have in the past helped in such circumstances. I further understand that local authorities can contribute to any relief fund set up to deal with disasters, and the Government have in the past stepped in and contributed where local authorities have done that.
I believe that, instead of the present ad hoc procedure, we should have a standard code of practice when flooding or some other natural disaster takes place so that everyone knows exactly what the position is.
I am particularly concerned about the speed with which financial help reaches people. It would seem, from my experience, that small amounts provided quickly can, in the long term, be less expensive than the delaying of expenditure. Local authorities are sometimes too cautious in assessing damage which has been done in case they make an underestimate, and time goes by without achieving a proper result.
In this regard I was impressed by the Wisbech council, which paid £100 to each family affected by the flood in that area within a week of its happening. I appreciate that, because of scale, that may not always be possible, because many houses can be affected by a tremendous flood. But, in addition to losses which people can revover from their insurance or from the local authority, many losses are uninsurable. Grants towards the cost of getting things dried out, to get electrical equipment put right and so on should be standard practice.
People can and should insure themselves. If not, they run the risk that the local authority to which they turn for help will say that they should have insured and cannot be helped. People should stand on their own feet, but a serious situation should still be met by compensation.
I turn to a heartbreaking case in my constituency. This is not the responsibility


of the Minister's Department but I have told him about it. A firm called Sea Spray Roses, at Pilling, grows roses under glass commercially. Its greenhouses were inundated by flooding, which wrecked the heating apparatus, virtually destroyed all the rose stock and put the land in the greenhouses out of action for some time. That business was totally destroyed, the production of roses has had to cease, the firm has had to sell four of its six acres of land to keep the greenhouses intact, and it has had to turn over to growing potatoes. The total loss is about £40,000.
Although there was an uninsurable loss, the compensation payable was very small—a Government grant to put the soil back into condition. One of the problems with the law is that rose trees are treated not as stock but as grassland, and they were not entitled to compensation. That hard case shows what flooding can do. If an authority has a statutory duty to protect an area from flooding, there may be a duty on the authority or the Government to step in when such losses occur.
After flooding—I have known of this in other parts of the country as well—people ask why the planning authority ever allowed building in the area. One clear answer is that if the planning authority believed its sea defences to be adequate, it was justified in doing so. But what if the water authority or the coastal defence authority warns the planners of a serious risk of flooding? Would it be able to veto the development, or would the matter have to go to the Secretary of State on appeal? I come up against this problem again and again in planning matters—that if a local authority permits something, people expect it to be safe. Authorities will have to take account of potential risk when planning.
I now turn to the mystery of the EEC moneys. So far as I know, no moneys have been allocated by the EEC as compensation for the flooding in North Lancashire in November 1977, but in 1978, in the same winter, moneys were allocated by the EEC to the east coast. What part, if any, did the Government play in determining that allocation? What was the money used for? Where was it spent? Did the Treasury put the money in the"kitty"to reduce its own expenditure?
I summarise my points as follows. First, there should be a close look at the present split of responsibility for sea defences. Second, the work of improving them, not only in my constituency but anywhere that people are at risk, should be completed with the utmost speed. Third, firm contingency plans should be made in areas where there is a risk of sea flooding. Fourth, a code of practice for immediate financial and other help in the case of flooding should be established. Fifth, further thought should be given to the treatment of uninsurable losses. Finally, in the longer term thought should be given to a disaster procedure which would include large-scale flooding.

12.41 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Kenneth Marks): I thank the hon. Member for North Fylde (Mr. Clegg) for his kind words about my regular attendance as a Minister at these late debates on Consolidated Fund Bills. I suppose that in a sense it is poetic justice that I should attend, because I must confess that as a Back Bencher I often kept Ministers up until a late hour in similar debates.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to debate this subject at a period when, happily, so far as I was aware when I entered the Chamber, the country is not somewhere or other suffering devastation from wind, sea, fire, flood or any of the other hazards that beset us from time to time.
There are two aspects to what the hon. Gentleman said—emergency services and the long-term arrangements for dealing with coastal erosion and flooding. I should perhaps briefly review the broad arrangements for dealing with emergencies, whether they arise from natural causes—the extremes of weather conditions that even our generally equable climate produces—or from major accidents, which by the nature of the hazards, the number and seriousness of the casualties or the disruption to the normal life of the community create problems far beyond what it is reasonable to expect the standing emergency service—police, fire or ambulance—to clear up unaided. The problem of oil pollution is one for the same maritime authorities as suffer from the incursion of the sea in various ways.
It is recognised that the great wealth of practical experience in dealing with these kinds of peacetime emergencies lies with the local and public authorities, and that in particular local authorities are best able to assess the hazards in their own areas, to plan the co-ordination of resources to meet them, to minimise the danger and to alleviate the effects upon their inhabitants. Parliament has given them very wide powers to take whatever action they consider necessary to avert, alleviate or eradicate the effects, or potential effects, of any emergency or disaster.
Under section 138 of the Local Government Act 1972, local authorities have those powers. Unfortunately, the Act gave them the powers but said nothing about Government help with the financial problems that would follow their use.
Local authorities have accepted the responsibility for some years, and have on many occasions discharged it well. But the cost to them can be high, and because of its very nature it is unforeseeable both as to amount and where it will fall on particular districts. For this reason, it cannot be taken into account in the determination and distribution of the general Exchequer assistance to local authorities through the rate support grant.
Therefore, since the beginning of last year we have provided for special financial assistance where, as a result of what the Government accept as an emergency, a local authority has had to incur expenditure which would impose an undue burden on its local resources. In deciding what is an undue burden, we must have regard to the financial resources of each local authority—its own rateable resources.
The well-recognised and convenient measure of those resources is the amount of money an authority can get from a penny rate. It is this amount—the product of a penny rate—that we consider can and should be met by a local authority without Government assistance. Where the additional expenditure attributable to the emergency exceeds the product of a penny rate, the Government will pay 75 per cent. of the excess. This arrangement has so far been without any specific statutory provision. I went up to Cleethorpes, Wisbech and King's Lynn at the beginning of last year, and my

hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture went up to North Lancashire. That was the arrangement that we came to, that my Department would meet that cost. As I say, it has been without statutory provision, and we have been doing it under the authority of the appropriate Act. On Monday last, however, we had the Second Reading of the Local Government Finance Bill, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will know that we are making provision in that Bill and it will be possible to discuss that in Committee.
Throughout this island's history, the sea has been both our defender and our attacker. I saw an example of the latter when I visited the Yorkshire coast at Humberside a few weeks ago in the very bad weather and saw the erosion which has taken place on that coast. We have to defend ourselves from two dangers of the attacks of the sea—erosion of the coast and flooding of the hinterland.
I take, first, the question of the two Ministries dealing with this matter, to which the hon. Gentleman referred. Coast protection works which are a defence against coastal erosion—usually of the higher ground—are the responsibility in the first place of the maritime district councils. They were made coast protection authorities by the Coast Protection Act 1949, which is administered, as the hon. Gentleman said, by my Department. These coastal protection works are designed to prevent the loss of land from erosion or encroachment.
Sea defence works are works designed to protect low-lying land—which, in the main, is what applies in the Fylde—from flooding by the sea. They are land drainage works covered by the land drainage legislation, under which both local authorities and water authorities—it is not simply a matter for water authorities—can act. This comes under the Land Drainage Act 1976, administered by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.
Bringing those two Acts together has been considered on a number of occasions. It would be administratively tidier, and, indeed, it is proposed to carry out a review of the Acts when circumstances permit. Also, when resources permit, it is the intention to carry out a


survey of the whole coastline. As I have, I think, explained to the hon. Gentleman on a previous occasion, there is no defined part of the coast which is Ministry of Agriculture or Department of the Environment responsibility. We want to get on with that survey so that we have detailed information about the whole coast where the two functions arise.
Grant aid under the Coast Protection Act—which is Department of the Environment—is on the basis of a specific grant for a specific scheme, and there is a formula for that. It is related to the cost of the work and the district council's ability to pay—again, the product of a penny rate. All schemes approved under the Act for capital works, including major reconstruction schemes, qualify for loan consent and for grants, and the grants, depending on the wealth of the local council, vary from 24 per cent. to 79 per cent. of the cost. There is also a contribution from the county council.
Wyre borough council has suffered from storm damage, particularly in the autumn of 1977 and especially on one estate, I think the Larkhome estate. The council is at present considering works estimated at £3 million for its western seaboard defence. The council itself is doubtful whether the works should be carried out under the coast protection or the land drainage legislation. I am sure that it is considering which is the best way of getting the job done and which would be better financially for the council.
Officials from the Ministry of Agriculture and the North-West water authority had a meeting with Wyre borough council in January. My Department discussed the situation in February with the officers of the Wyre borough council, and they arranged a meeting on site to consider whether there is any coast protection element in what has to be done. An agreement has been made that the council should arrange a meeting, inviting representatives of the water authority, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the Department of the Environment and the county. We are still waiting for the council to take action on that.
The Lancashire authorities suffered general damage in November 1977 and had to meet the cost which fell to be considered for the special financial

assistance. Only one of the Lancashire councils—Wyre district council—claimed to have incurred expenditure greater than a penny rate product. But we have not been able to accept the claim because of an important principle. In order to maintain equity of treatment of all local authorities, we must adhere to the principle that the Government should not contribute towards normally insurable losses. The question involves insurance for local authority property. That is for each local authority to decide.
When, for whatever reason, a local authority decides not to insure its own property, it decides to bear the risk itself in preference to paying insurance premiums. It cannot expect to reap from the Government an advantage over local authorities which take out insurance. Wyre district council's expenditure of £190,000 included £50,753 for repairs to council-owned houses which were not insured. Thus, the eligible expenditure amounts to less than a penny rate.
We leave the decision about declaring a disaster area to the councils. They decide and inform us. Local authorities are now getting the hang of the procedure. Section 138 of the 1972 Act was clear. Everybody in Wisbech, for instance, whose ground floor was flooded was given £100. We accepted that as part of the council's expenditure. The council decided on that. The scheme is flexible enough for the Government not to have to announce a disaster area.
I was also asked about the aid given by the EEC following the winter's storms. This amounted to 1 million European units of account, or £630,000, for England and Wales. The Government decided that this aid should be used partly to contribute to a fund for compensating farmers suffering heavy livestock losses and partly for local authorities.
The EEC originally said that the money was to be used only to help those suffering from the February floods. But it agreed that it should be made available to the areas of England and Wales which had suffered in the gales of November 1977 and January 1978 and the blizzard of 1978. On 1 August 1978, the Secretary of State announced that about £440,000 was to be distributed to local authorities which demonstrated their need by incurring exceptional expenditure above a


penny rate. The money will be distributed according to the severity of the burden remaining to be borne by the local authorities which spent more than a penny rate and had some Government grant but which are still eligible for more.
Planning is a matter for the local authorities. Often the public find it hard to understand that once a local authority approves a planning application, that is it and there is no appeal to the Secretary of State. Only when an authority refuses an application is there such an appeal. I know of cases where a water authority has recommended to planning authorities that because of flood danger it should not build in an area. My Department sometimes recommends that building should not take place too near the coast where there is heavy erosion. Sometimes local authorities go ahead and give permission. As a result, there have been instances of flooding. We sometimes get the argument that Whitehall does not know best and that the local people on site know best.
There has been some improvement in the early warning system. There was concern in North Norfolk last year, but I think that more recently there has been a better approach. We are working on this at the moment. We hope to be able to flash messages on to television screens. In addition, local radio has a part to play.
The suggestion was made that we should treat disasters on an ad hoc basis. Disasters tend to be ad hoc. None of us expected that we would get such bad weather this winter. While I have heard people criticising local councils for not having dozens of snow ploughs and gritting machines ready, it is probably true to say that very few of those who have complained had chains for the wheels of their cars.
When a local authority decides to declare a disaster area, Government Departments act rapidly. In the cases that we had last year, the Department of Health and Social Security set up special facilities in the affected areas. My own Department promptly had people on the spot, as did the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. The Ministry of Defence plays a most prominent part. The drying-out of houses is one of its functions. The RAF is able to bring its huge

hangar heaters into play, which dry out a house in a short time.
All this work has to be paid for. The Ministry of Defence charges for the job. But the charge can go on to the emergency spending bill of the local authority, which is eligible for relief. The system is not perfect. We reached the 75 per cent. figure by making a rapid judgment last year to help local authorities. Surprisingly few local authorities have submitted claims. There were only eight of the maritime local authorities in 1977 and 1978 which submitted claims. We believe that we are on the way to achieving a combination of local initiative to do the work, assistance from Government Departments and financial help from the Government when the need arises.

ROYAL NAVY AND ROYAL MARINES (PAY)

12.57 a.m.

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles: I wish to raise, under Supplementary Estimates—class 1: Defence—the question of the pay and allowances of the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines. I start by apologising to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and the staff of the House for keeping people up at this late hour. I also apologise to the Minister. But, since he bears overall responsibility for the welfare of the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines, I am sure that he will not object to discussing the important matter of their pay—even in the middle of the night.
As the Under-Secretary knows, thousands of naval officers and ratings are awake and alert in many parts of the world and doing their duty at sea at this hour. I believe that the Minister's heart is in the right place and that he has a real concern for the good of the Royal Navy. Because he has served in the Royal Navy, he will know all about keeping middle watches.
On a wider issue, I realise that there is to be a defence debate the week after next. So often in such debates there is no clear thread. Strategy, weaponry, discipline and constituency points are all jumbled together. I want to place on record the situation regarding Service pay and allowances as a subject on its own.
I realise that the report of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body is due within the next few weeks and that the Minister


is, therefore, in a difficult position. He will doubtless say that there is nothing that he can tell the House at this time. That is not the point. From the Opposition Benches it is important to raise this issue before the review body's report is finalised and before it is considered by the Government, not afterwards. This seems to me a good moment.
Nobody will deny that forces' pay is a subject of great importance. Nobody will deny that there is currently a great torrent of pay claims in the civilian sector, particularly among civilian Government employees. My fear is that the problems of the forces' pay are once again being neglected in the rush of claims in other sectors, particularly those sectors which are prepared to take militant action to embarrass, or even to blackmail, the Government. The forces, of course, are not.
That fact throws a direct moral responsibility upon the Cabinet and upon Government Ministers, particularly Service Ministers, to see that the forces get a fair deal. The situation is that the forces are not getting a square deal at all—far from it. The theory is that forces' pay awards since 1971 should be settled by comparison with a range of civilian earnings. This is exactly what has not happened. The forces have been falling behind year after year ever since the scheme was introduced in 1971. Their shortfall has been at a cumulative and accelerating rate, particularly from 1975 onwards.
This is a difficult matter to represent statistically in a speech. I should like to give some examples. The official figures mention soldiers, but comparable ranks in the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines are paid the same rates. Let me compare the weekly wages of a private soldier with those of the average manual worker. In 1972, the civilian got £32-odd and the soldier £26-odd. In other words, they were in a comparable bracket. Now the soldier gets £52 and the civilian manual worker gets more than £80. In percentage terms, the soldier has risen from 100 units in 1970, the base year, to 248, while the civilian has gone from the same starting point to more than 300.
Senior officers have seen their pay and differentials even more massively eroded. But their chief frustration is the knowledge that the men whom they command

are not getting a fair deal over pay and that they are seen to be powerless to do anything about the men's pay. As the Minister, with his Service background, will understand, that is a serious matter.
I should like to give another striking example. London Transport bus drivers, according to Ministry figures, earn an average of £99 a week. That is a little over £5,000 a year. It is, I suppose, the rate for the job, and I do not query the amount. But a naval lieutenant flying a helicopter or a Harrier jump-jet gets less, at least until he becomes a very senior lieutenant. The Minister has served in the Fleet Air Arm. Can he look me in the eye and say that this situation is right and fair? He does not look me in the eye.
Another example concerns the fabled Winchester dustmen. I have nothing against them, and I am glad that their dispute is settled. They will now earn at least £85 a week and certainly over £2 a hour. I am not complaining about that, but I would point out that the Green Jackets, from the same city, serving in Ulster draw less than 50p an hour, less than one-quarter of the dustmen's hourly rate. The Royal Marines in Ulster receive the same. Is that a fair and just reward for these Servicemen? Is the Minister able to look me in the eye on that one and say that that is fair and just?

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Myer Galpern): It seems that the Minister has developed a squint.

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles: Is £1 a day extra pay a fair reward for undertaking a 90- or 100-hour week in Northern Ireland?
The Minister will not have to squint for much longer as I turn to example No. 4. On 25 April 1978, the Prime Minister announced pay increases for the forces for the next 12 months. It amounted to a 10 per cent. increase plus 3 per cent. on the"X factor ". That was a total increase of a shade over 13 per cent. The latest Department of Employment official figures in the Department's Gazette show that average civilian earnings taken over all industries have increased by 16·4 per cent. since then. So already the Services have fallen even further behind than they were at this time last year.
That indicates how correct my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition was when, at the time of the announcement, she said:
 As average earnings for the nation as a whole are rising by about 14 per cent. a year and as forces' pay has fallen behind that of their civilian equivalents by some 32 per cent., is the Prime Minister aware that this award means that for another year the Services are going to stay as far behind as they are now? 
The Prime Minister made a specific promise on 25 April 1978, when he referred to
 a firm pledge to bring the Armed Forces up to equivalent and comparable levels in the next two years."—[Official Report, 25 April 1978;Vol. 948, c. 1180–2.]
Despite that assertion the forces see themselves falling further and further behind.
How has all this arisen? I want to be objective and not merely critical. I think that we must blame the Government principally. Individual Ministers may have been pressing for fairer treatment for the forces. I am confident that the Navy Minister himself has been doing so. However, we must bear in mind the results and face the fact that they have been entirely unsuccessful.
I am afraid that the Armed Forces Pay Review Body cannot escape some of the blame. In successive reports it has made its recommendations within the constraints of the Government's declared pay policy, rather than doing its sums and declaring what comparability levels should be. For example, in the second paragraph of the 1977 report it stated:
 Once again, therefore, effectively we are free only to recommend whether the pay of the Armed Forces should be increased by the maximum amount allowed by the Goverment's pay limits or by some lesser amount.
Everybody else except those in the Services has driven a cart and horses through the Government's pay norms. It is sad for the nation, but that is the case.
It should be for the review body to report the comparability figures and for the Government of the day to take the political decisions to pay them in full or in part. The Government of the day should take the political odium if they decide not to pay to the extent of the full comparability figures.
To be fair to the review body, through the years it has given the Government ample warning about the difficulties that might be expected to arise. It has pointed out the problems of compression of differentials, the problems of the X factor, food and accommodation charges and"overstretch ". It has drawn attention to the continuing shortfall on pay.
It is true that cuts in the equipment of the forces worry Service men just as much as their pay. However, I am talking about pay.
The review body is composed of distinguished and well-meaning men and women from many walks of life. It is most regrettable that that body should have become an object of suspicion among many in the Armed Forces, who now tend to regard it as the Government's poodle rather than as a free and independent body. I do not envy its members their task and I admire their meticulous, painstaking attention to detail, but it is difficult to acquit them of being politically naive. For example, in the last paragraph of their 1978 report, they fudge the whole issue by recommending that
 the Government should give a firm commitment that fully up to date rates of pay will be implemented by 1st April 1980 at the latest.
Given this invitation to spread out over two years the additional pay already overdue to the forces, the Government inevitably grasped it. The whole concept of comparability implies that the forces will be one year behind civilian earnings in any case—in itself a great disadvantage at a time of rapid inflation. Therefore, it is absurd to compound this difficulty by spreading overdue payments over a further period. To do so is not only grossly unfair to Service men, who lose permanently the amounts due to them, but it increases the Government's difficulties when the time comes to make good their promises.
The effects of this unfair treatment of Service men goes far and wide. Many Service men are in real financial difficulties. It is true to say that all are coldly and silently furious about the situation, and we saw the regrettable spectacle of Service wives in the mass lobby last summer.
Recruiting difficulties and applications for premature retirement are worrying,


and the latest defence review White Paper—Command 7474—has a paragraph, paragraph 403, headed"Outflow"which reads:
 The total numbers of men and women leaving the Services for all reasons during 1978–79 continued to include an unusually high outflow among the more experienced and highly skilled categories following requests for premature voluntary release. If current rates of outflow from this source continue, the consequences in the loss of trained officers and men will be serious for the Armed Forces, and the Government attaches great importance to correcting this trend.
Well, what are the Government doing about it?
The paragraph continues:
 Dissatisfaction with pay was certainly one of the main reasons for the outflow; but undoubtedly other contributing factors were conditions of service generally, including the turbulence and increased family separation which have been unavoidable consequences of the 1974 Defence Review.
It is ironic, Mr. Speaker, to read that turbulence and increased family separation were the unavoidable consequences of that review, because we were told at the time that the defence review was designed to produce a period of stability for the Armed Forces.
I repeat, Mr. Speaker, that I am trying to be constructive—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. For the record, I must ask the hon. and gallant Gentleman whether he can look me straight in the eye and still address me as"Mr. Speaker ".

Rear-Admiral Morgan: -Giles: I am sorry for that oversight, Mr. Deputy Speaker—or is it in order to call you"Sir "?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Yes, of course. It is only that later my wife may ask me where I was at this time of night. If she sees that Mr. Speaker was in the Chair, she will not believe me.

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles: I see your problem, Mr. Deputy Speaker. My wife has no such problem.
What must now be done? I have not used the words"What must be done to restore morale?"It is to the eternal credit of the men of all three Services that their morale remains as good as it is despite the fact so many

of them feel that the Government have given them a dud cheque, or"green rub"as they say.
What I am asking is what must be done to be fair to the forces. First and foremost, the Government should restore full comparability now and not wait until April 1980. This would involve an average increase of more than 30 per cent., and that is the difficulty. But I believe that the Government should have the political courage to grasp this nettle.
A much larger percentage of the increase could be included under the X factor. The public would understand that the forces receive no overtime—not even those serving in Northern Ireland and working more than 100 hours a week. They understand that striking is unthinkable for the forces. They understand that moonlighting is almost impossible—certainly for those serving in the Royal Navy or the Royal Marines. The Government could and should grasp this nettle now. I see no other way in which the forces can be given a proper deal.
Service men understand the nation's difficulties and they are willing to bear their fair share of any necessary restraint. They are not asking to be treated as a special case. They are only asking to be treated as a normal case—that is, to be paid at the fair and agreed comparability which they have been promised and which is the essence of the scheme which has now been in force for six or seven years.
Above all, Service men have a pride in themselves and in the job they do. They are accustomed to straight talking and direct action. They want a fair deal immediately and, for all that they do for us, they deserve nothing less.

1.18 a.m.

Mr. Michael Mates: I congratulate my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Winchester (Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles) on setting out some of the real problems facing the Navy, the Marines and other Services. He did so in his usual robust and clear fashion.
It is timely to discuss this matter now. It may well be that the words that are said tonight will be read by those in the Armed Forces Pay Review Body who are considering what might be announced in a couple of weeks. We will not have time adequately to discuss the narrow issue of


pay and the growing and changing effects that pay is having on attitudes in all the Services. Certainly, even a short debate in the early hours of the morning is better than not discussing the subject until after Easter when a Supply day perhaps could be arranged.
I used the words"growing and changing ". The Minister probably recognises in his heart of hearts that it is not just simply a question of comparability and the amount by which the Services have fallen behind. That is not an issue. The Services are all behind the curve of pay rises across both public and private sectors. Last year the Government promised that they would have caught up by 1980. The forces still do not believe it, and will not do so until they see it. I hope that the Minister tonight will repeat that pledge as unequivocally as the Secretary of State has done. It needs saying again and again because too many times Service men have felt that they have been let down by promises made and not kept by their political chiefs. How the Government keep their pledge will depend on the terms in which the review body reports. We cannot do more than speculate about that now.
Any report should take into account all the factors of the last pay round. Perhaps we could be told tonight what is the cut-off date for the consideration of pay rises by the Armed Forces Pay Review Body. Will the latest settlements in the public sector be taken into account? Will settlements made between now and 1 April be taken into account? Will the review body be made to say that it was forced to stop looking at pay round rises at some date in January, February or March 1979? If that is the case, it will further undermine the forces' morale. The forces are suspicious of what will come. They are also suspicious of the silence maintained by Defence Ministers over the past months.
Last week I was a member of a delegation that visited the Services in Ulster. We went all round the Province seeing mostly Army personnel, but we were briefed in Lisburn by the senior naval officer in Northern Ireland. It was brought home to us time and again that this period is important. One commanding officer to whom we spoke had brought his battalion back, for the second time in his two-and-a-half-year period of command, for a

four-month tour of duty. He said that after he left Ulster 16 months ago he lost 75 men from his 550-strong battalion by premature retirement. Service personnel cannot leave the forces during a period of active duty. That wastage was largely due to low pay. This problem has been a running sore for so long that it has now gone far beyond the simple lack of money: it is a lack of faith in the Government's intention to reward them for the arduous and dangerous duties that they perform. It is not just the money. The principle that they see behind the withholding of what is received by everybody else in our community in the private and public sectors is getting them down. Both Service men and their wives are affected by this situation.
I was present in the Lobby last year when nearly 1,000 Service men's wives appeared. Not one member of the Ministry of Defence came to see those women, who wanted to complain face to face about the conditions under which their husbands served. Those wives were not all members of the Conservative Party, although I doubt whether there is a Socialist left in the Services now. They came from constituencies all over the country. Not one Minister could find time to talk to them.
We cannot tell what form the review body's recommendations will take. However, if the review body follows the form of the past three or four years, there may be a percentage recommendation, or a recommendation for an increase in the X factor. The Government pledged themselves to accept this in full. They have not made clear how they will split the amount between this year and next year. Perhaps the Minister will help us on that matter tonight. Any back-tracking or failure to give the absolute maximum this time round will continue the disastrous series of trends affecting morale, recruitment and premature retirement in the Services.
The recruitment figures are not as bad as they might be in the circumstances. But the main point has been missed: the problem cannot be demonstrated in the bare, basic figures. We are losing the middle management, the senior lieutenants and the young captains, their equivalents in the Navy and the Air Force, the senior corporals, the sergeants, the young staff sergeants and their equivalents in the


other Services. They should be the petty officers, sergeant-majors, commanding officers and ships' captains over the next five to 10 years. We cannot replace them by taking on another bunch of 18-year-old recruits from civilian life and turning them into Service men.
We are losing the seedcorn of future command—the future staff officers, the people who will advise Ministers on policy and strategy within the Services. They are the ones who are getting out, and they are irreplaceable, except over a very long period of years.
Simply to talk blandly about figures of recruiting and figures of retirement is to hide that basic fact. Experienced Service men cannot be hired. There is only one school in which anyone can learn how to become a petty officer, a sergeant-major, a colonel or an admiral, and that is by going up through the system within the Services and serving at every level of command, on board ship, in the air or in the Army.
The other factors on pay that I want to stress are those relating to comparability and overtime. No one is asking that a Service man should be paid overtime. It would not be possible. It would create more anomalies than it would solve. That is accepted. There is resentment, however, when basic rates of pay are compared. This resentment has grown over the past two years in direct proportion to the number of occasions when Service men have been required to serve alongside civilians. It is something which has grown throughout our society.
It was not until the Service men had to put out the fires for the striking firemen that they realised just how much the firemen were being paid for putting out those fires. It was not what the newspapers said they were being paid. It was not what the union leaders said they were being paid, which is always the basic rate, the lowest possible figure which can be used for bargaining. The Service men realised how much the firemen, with weekend work and overtime, were taking home to their wives and families.
Standing side by side, shoulder to shoulder, with firemen, ambulance men, dustmen and many of the people in the public service here—and in Northern Ireland alongside the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the prison service—the Ser-

vice men can actually see the difference in standards of living. They go to the houses of their friends and colleagues in the prison service and the police service, and they see what they are able to buy for their families and the way they are able to clothe their children. They compare this with their own lot, usually with their family 100 miles or more away, either back in this country or, worse still, left in Germany.
This has become a much more running sore in Ulster over the past year than it ever was before. Although it looks as though, roughly speaking, a constable in the Royal Ulster Constabulary gets much the same as a private soldier or a marine for doing roughly the same job, that is for a 40-hour week in the case of the policeman and in the case of the prison officer. I pay tribute to the policemen and the prison officers. No one is complaining about what they are getting.
There are three groups of people—I use Ulster as an example because it is easily comparable—all doing an exceedingly dangerous, unpleasant duty for their country, whether it be in the RUC, in the prison service or in the Services. They are all at risk of being killed, whether by being bombed or shot—and, alas, many of them are. They are all doing a most important and vital job. The statistics will say that they are, roughly speaking, grade for grade, drawing the same pay. The facts are that there are prison officers—I do not begrudge it—taking home £8,000,£9,000and £10,000 a year because of the amount of overtime they are doing, because of the danger money they are getting and because of the"dirty"pay they are getting for working in the H-blocks and so on.
It is the same with the RUC, particularly with those who are confined to the rural area police stations, where they have to work incredibly long hours. They get paid for those incredibly long hours. In any rural police station that one visits, there will be a sergeant and a couple of constables running the show There will also be a troop of soldiers doing exactly the same work. They are working cheek by jowl, and the policemen are taking home two or three times the amount of money that the soldiers get. The soldiers are seeing it. Their resentment is seething and growing, and the anomaly is totally unsustainable.
I hope that the Minister will tell us that he and the Secretary of State intend to take a more robust attitude towards the report and recommendations than they have in the past five years. The Government are dying. They have only months to live. If Ministers in the Service Departments wish to leave office feeling satisfied that they have done their best for those whom they are paid to look after, the least they can do is to see that Service men are properly rewarded for the dangers that they face, for their selfless devotion to duty and for everything else that they do for which we have to thank them.

1.31 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Navy (Mr. A. E. P. Duffy): The House is aware of, and appreciates, the very great interest that the hon. and gallant Member for Winchester (Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles) has always shown in the Armed Forces and his concern, especially in the past two years, over Service pay.
The hon. and gallant Gentleman was good enough to acknowledge my understanding and concern about pay and allowances in the Royal Navy and I am grateful to him. I am glad to have an opportunity to say something about pay and allowances and about the mechanism that regulates the pay of the Services.
Hon. Members who are present for the debate are particularly concerned and informed, but the whole House knows that the pay of all three Services is reviewed annually by the Armed Forces Pay Review Body. Its members work extremely hard, without pay, and are responsible for making recommendations on Service pay to the Prime Minister.
In the course of its work, the body is free to seek whatever evidence it wishes. It visits units and establishments of the Armed Forces, including the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines, and receives evidence from the Ministry of Defence. The body must make up its mind on the evidence that it has obtained to put whatever recommendations it considers appropriate to the Prime Minister. Throughout the whole of its work, the body exercises complete independence.
After the report has been submitted to the Prime Minister, it is for the Government to take the necessary decisions in

the light of the recommendations and the public interest.
The timing of the report on the 1979 award is a matter for the body, but I expect it to be presented to the Prime Minister some time towards the end of this month. Personally, I think that it may slip a week, but I expect my right hon. Friend to have the report by the end of the first week in April. That is the timetable that I envisage. The hon. and gallant Gentleman will realise that I am not in a position to say more than that, and I certainly cannot forecast the findings of the review body.
I can make these observations about some of the remarks that have been made in the debate. In my experience—and I have been Navy Minister for almost three years—there can be no question of neglect. If I thought that there was, I would cease to be Minister tonight. I visit shore establishments and ships ceaselessly. I am off on a visit every week, sometimes on more than one visit, as, for example, next week, when on Tuesday I shall be in Portsmouth and on Wednesday in the constituency of the hon. and gallant Member for Winchester. The people I meet on these visits are interested and concerned, like everyone else in our society nowadays, in the question of pay, allowances and comparability. But I have yet to meet any Service man—although he may exist and may so far have eluded me—who has thought he has been unfairly treated.

Mr. Norman Tebbit: Oh, no.

Mr. Duffy: Therefore, Mr. Deputy Speaker, you will not be surprised to know that I have not met any Service man who has given me the impression of being, in the words of the hon. and gallant Member for Winchester, coldly furious.

Mr. Mates: More is the pity that the Minister did not come when he would have met a thousand hotly furious wives of Service men. They were certainly publicly stating their discontent.

Mr. Duffy: I shall come to that.
It also follows from my experience, which I am fairly relating—and it is capable of a certain degree of checking and validating and, therefore, must square with


other people's impressions—that I cannot entertain seriously the charge of scepticism made by the hon. Member for Petersfield (Mr. Mates). I have not encountered that anywhere on the part of any Service man. I have not found anywhere evidence of a lack of faith in the Government. I rarely undertake any visit where I do not at some point in my exchanges with personnel find myself ranging far and wide in discussion that touches on Government policy. That would provide the opportunity for a man or woman somewhere—an officer, rating or"Wren "—to make the point about the lack of faith. I cannot honestly recall that having been made at any time.
Let me turn next to the wives' lobby. I thought that this matter was dealt with last year, either during the two-day defence debate or during the Navy debate. I challenged then the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) about who was responsible for booking the room in which the Service men's wives were received. The hon. Member admitted that he was, if not wholly, certainly partly responsible for the booking. All hon. Members know the arrangements for lobbying. Lobbyists now entering the Palace of Westminster through St. Stephen's entrance are quickly siphoned off into a room. All that is understood. I cannot imagine any other arrangement nowadays.
The room into which those naval and, perhaps, Army and Royal Air Force wives were siphoned on that occasion had been booked in the name of Conservative Members of Parliament. I do not blame them for that, but neither must they blame Labour Members, including Ministers, for not being present at what was a Conservative meeting in the Palace of Westminster. Nor can I accept the hon. and gallant Gentleman's charge that there were no Service Ministers present and ready, therefore, to receive those wives, because Ministers were present but they were not able to see them in that room. They were waiting to see the wives, and some, of course, were seen, but not in the numbers in which they were received in the room that was booked for the lobby. I hope that that matter is now dispensed with for the second and last time.
However, to return to the 1978 award, as the House knows, the Armed Forces

were treated as a special case in relation to pay policy and given a forward commitment that would restore comparability of earnings with civilian employment by April 1980. Indeed, the House will recollect the positive steps taken by the Government on Service pay from April 1978 and their forward commitment. Specifically, the award raised the military salary by an average of 13 per cent., including increases of 50 per cent. in major forms of additional pay such as submarine, diving and parachute pay. Northern Ireland pay was doubled to £1 per day. Separation allowance was increased by about two-thirds. In addition, a standstill was applied to charges for accommodation, pending a further examination by the review body. Taken together, these elements represented a general overall increase last year of about 14 per cent. in Armed Forces' pay.
The House will also recall that the Government made a specific commitment on the restoration of fully comparable rates of pay. The commitment was that from 1 April 1979 the Services will have a pay increase which will consist broadly of half the amount required to bring them up to the full military salary as at April 1978, together with whatever amount is required to update the award to April 1979.
To answer yet another of the queries raised by the hon. and gallant Gentleman, recent settlements in excess of 5 per cent. will, of course, in this way, be taken into account.

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles: I am grateful to the Minister for what he is saying and for replying in a full way to the points made from the Opposition Benches. However, does he really take the point—I have tried to make it clear; I hoped that I had done so—that these deferred steps towards comparability are permanently depriving the men of the money which they should have had year by year, which will now never be paid to them even if they eventually catch up to comparability? It is a really massive shortfall in what they rightly consider should have been their deserts. I quite appreciate that it is not the Minister's fault personally. It is the Government's fault.

Mr. Duffy: In so far as there are grounds here for grievance, I think that


hon. Gentlemen present will agree that this is a universal grievance.

Mr. Mates: No.

Mr. Duffy: It is certainly expressed universally, and presumably it is felt universally. One meets it on all sides. Who does not feel this sense of deprivation in our society nowadays?
I repeat the commitment. From 1 April 1979, the Services will have a pay increase which will consist broadly of half the amount required to bring them up to the full military salary as at April 1978, together with whatever amount is required to update the award to April 1979. This, of course, will arise from a further recommendation in the review body's 1979 rpeort. In 1980 the Services will receive the remaining half to bring them up to full military salary at April 1978 together with the appropriate up dating between April 1979 and April 1980.
The result will be that in April 1980 the Armed Forces will have the full military salary fully updated to the then current levels. There can be no ground for the apprehension expressed by the hon. and gallant Member for Winchester that Service men fear that they will fall further and further behind. This commitment is clear and will be honoured, regardless of any pay policy which might be in operation over the period. It is again reflected in paragraph 147 of the"Statement on the Defence Estimates "—Cmnd. 7474—published only last month.
As regards pensions, the Government have already fully protected Armed Forces pensioners by basing pensions from last April on the fully comparable rates of military salary recommended by the review body last year. I recognise that pensioners who retired from the Armed Forces in 1976 and 1977 have been adversely affected by pay restraint. I appreciate the concern of hon. Members and have said so at this Dispatch Box. But this position is not confined to the Armed Forces. It exists right across the public services. That is where much of the problem lies. The studies that we have undertaken suggest that the implications for the whole system of public service superannuation schemes could be considerable. I cannot at this stage pre-

dict whether or when any practicable or acceptable solution will emerge.
As regards allowances, the Royal Navy and Royal Marines receive the allowances available to all three Services. Most of these compensate for expenditure actually incurred and are regularly adjusted—usually annually—to take account of any changes.
Overseas allowances are intended to enable personnel to maintain a standard of living similar to that which they would have enjoyed in the United Kingdom and will therefore vary from area to area.
As regards the effects of the 1978 award on manpower—I note what was said by both the hon. and gallant Gentleman and his hon. Friend the Member for Petersfield about recruiting and retention—the numbers recruited overall to the Royal Navy and Royal Marines during the present financial year show increases over the same period of last year and compare reasonably well, as the hon. and gallant Member for Winchester noted, with the numbers recruited in recent years.
The rate of premature voluntary retirement, however, remains too high. This, along with the increased manpower requirement, has led to an increase in the current recruiting targets. We therefore need to recruit more than we did in the last few years. Pay is not the only factor affecting retention, but I believe that, as the pay of the Armed Forces returns to its proper level under the Government's forward commitment, the current manpower problems will begin to disappear.
As regards accommodating any pay award to the Armed Forces within the defence cash limits, to the extent that the settlement may exceed the Estimates provision, the Government will decide in the light of all the circumstances at the time whether the defence cash limits should be adjusted to meet any additional costs.
The review body is now preparing its report for 1979 and will be forwarding it to the Prime Minister within the next two to three weeks. I repeat that the Government will honour their commitments as I have described them, that the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines—perhaps I may speak also on behalf of the Army and the Royal Air Force—will as soon as possible be well under way to restoration of full comparability as we have promised.


The award will be announced as soon as we can, but in any event increases will become effective for all the Armed Services from 1 April 1979.

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles: Would I be in order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, in thanking the Minister for replying to the debate and you yourself, Sir, for sitting it out?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: No, that is not in order. Only Ministers can, with leave of the House, speak more than once during a debate.

EUROPEAN AIRBUS PROGRAMME

1.51 a.m.

Mr. Norman Tebbit: fancy that this section of the debate will be somewhat like the Bible and Shakespeare—not that the prose will be quite to the same standard, I fear, but it will be full of quotations.
I was interested to see today that the noble Lord, Lord Beswick has spoken about the Treasury memorandum which has led to re-energising the debate over British Aerospace's programme of civil air transport development. The rules of order prevent me from commenting on the Hawker Siddeley 146 programme. since the hook upon which this section of the debate is hung is that of the £50 million to be paid to British Aerospace under section 45 of the 1977 Act.
Right at the beginning I should like to re-establish the common ground which I established long ago with the Government when I spoke on behalf of the Opposition in the debate on 23 January last year on the future of the civil aircraft industry in Europe. Some of that common ground was well described by the Minister of State:
 I repeat, however, that what the Government will be looking for is firm evidence of commercial viability."—[Official Report, 23 January 1978;Vol. 942, c. 1116.]
That was his version of what was required of any programme into which British Aerospace entered.
Since then, the long and at times difficult negotiations to which the Minister of State referred in that debate have culminated in the re-entry of British Aerospace into the Airbus consortium

from which the Labour Government of 1966 had withdrawn. It was agreed then that not only would the private venture of the old Hawker Siddeley Aircraft Company into the A300 project continue but that the new nationalised Corporation would become a full partner in the A310 programme as well.
Thus, just over a month ago, in the Second Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c., I was able to give the assent of the Opposition to the payment of the £50 million to which this debate refers. The Under-Secretary of State told us then that British Aerospace would need to invest £250 million in the A300 and A310 programmes. He said:
 British Aerospace estimates that by 1983 it will need to invest a further £250 million at 1978 prices. We believe that this is not an opportunity we can afford to let slip through our fingers. That is why we decided to agree to British Aerospace's request for assistance in order to improve the immediate return on its investment.
The Minister was a little unclear how that first £50 million would feature in British Aerospace's books. I understood him to say that it might be grant, wholly or partly loan, or public dividend capital, or a mixture. He added:
 Hon. Members can be assured that through our providing the money in this way the necessary financial resources for joining Airbus Industrie are thus available to the corporation. At the same time, the Government will be able to maintain, through the setting of appropriate financial targets, the necessary degree of financial discipline over the whole field of British Aerospace's operations.
That was fairly clear.
Having quoted the Minister, I think it excusable for me to quote my own words in that debate:
 We should certainly not want to prevent the orders from being passed, because to do so would be to cripple British Aerospace's programme of entering the Airbus consortium.
It is very difficult for us to judge whether the Airbus consortium will be a profitable business for British Aerospace. We simply do not have access to the figures which we would need to make any judgment on that matter…we must to a considerable extent trust in the judgment of the board of British Aerospace, and we have to put some trust in the judgment of the Ministers who have been approached by British Aerospace for financial backing for this project.
Later I asked, as had my hon. Friend the Member for Chertsey and Walton (Mr. Pattie), what return the taxpayer could expect upon his investment—I think not an unreasonable request by an


investor. Unhappily, we did not receive an answer on that occasion. The Under-Secretary of State half answered the question when he said:
 These projects have been considered very carefully indeed. I remind hon. Gentlemen that we have already said that the financial objective for 1978 for British Aerospace was to make a 20 per cent. return on net assets. We have announced in Parliament that that is the kind of stringent financial discipline that we propose to apply to projects into which British Aerospace may venture.
Therefore, the hon. Gentleman was not actually saying that there was to be a 20 per cent. return on this venture. But he was saying that 20 per cent. was the kind of"stringent financial discipline"that he proposed to apply to projects into which British Aerospace would venture.
A little later he said:
 British Aerospace is satisfied that the prospective return on its investment is adequate. That has been considered very carefully indeed.
Were we to conclude from that that the Minister meant that the return on this project was expected to be 20 per cent.? It is possible that one could do so.
Subsequently, in a series of exchanges, I asked the Minister to say whether he meant just that, that the investment in the A300 and A310 programmes would give a 20 per cent. return. At this time of night I shall not quote extensively from a sterile exchange. It is sufficient to say that in the final exchanges the Minister said:
 I recognise that the hon. Gentleman "—
he was referring to me—
 is trying to draw me. He will obviously realise that the final level and the form of the objectives of British Aerospace have yet to be set out.
I said:
 So it is not to be 20 per cent.",
and the Minister replied:
 I am not detracting from that at all. I am simply saying that that is the kind of return which has been set."—[Official Report, Second Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &amp;c, 7 February 1979; c. 16–32.]
So at the end the hon. Gentleman was, if anything, backing off from what he had said earlier.
At that stage I more or less made up my mind that we should have to wait till after a general election to get our hands on the figures and see how the Airbus venture fitted into the 20 per cent. target.
I can well understand that on a long-term programme the Minister may have a range of investment returns, perhaps from a worst case of as little as 10 per cent. to a hoped-for 25 per cent., and he was reluctant to commit himself. The House may therefore understand my shock and disappointment when I read in The Guardian that Sir Douglas Wass and the Treasury saw—again, I quote from the Treasury memorandum—that
 participation in the proposed A310 airbus jet will involve a negative cash flow of £300 million by 1983 "—
that is no particular surprise—
 and a loss at today's prices which could be£110 million.
A loss of £110 million, and no mention in the Treasury memorandum of any prospect of profit at all!
That came on top of a series of unnerving accounts from well-informed people who had told me of the anxieties of the German Government over the scale of their prospective losses in their share of the same project. Indeed, as the Minister knows, the German Government are tending to subcontract out part of their work on the Airbus to other countries to mitigate the loss which is falling, apparently, upon the German taxpayer.
All of us here—I think that I speak for everyone in the House, not just for those present tonight—badly want British Aerospace to be a success. I want it. The Minister wants it. We all want it. But the matter to be cleared up tonight is whether it is heading for a 20 per cent. positive return on the Airbus investment, as the Minister has implied, or a possible £110 million loss, with no prospect of profit, as the Treasury fears.
I do not believe that the Treasury invented the figures in Sir Douglas Wass's letter to his colleague Sir Peter Carey at the Department of Industry. I do not believe that the Treasury goes about inventing figures like that. If the Treasury just invented the figures, I fear to think of the doubts which will be cast upon future Treasury figures produced by Ministers at the Dispatch Box.
Obviously, the Government do not believe that. Clearly, the Prime Minister still has confidence in Sir Douglas Wass, or he would have been fired. The Treasury figures came from somewhere other than the back of an old empty cigarette box. The conclusion must be that the


Treasury obtained its figures from the Department of Industry and from British Aerospace.
The question which that poses is simple but important. How could the Minister assure the House that the return was expected to be 20 per cent., yet the Treasury concluded that it was expecting a loss of up to £110 million, looking at the same figures from the same source, since there was no source for the figures save British Aerospace and the Department of Industry?
Is this difference a difference between the Department of Industry view and the Treasury view over sales prospects, over possible development costs, over production costs, or over currency level forecasts? Any of those could be an explanation for a wide divergence of view, but we are entitled to know which it is.
We have been encouraged and delighted about the orders which have been gained recently for the A300 and the A310. We wish both aircraft well. Tonight I am not speaking officially for the Opposition, but for myself. I want to see British Aerospace raise the remainder of the cash to go ahead with a profitable programme. I doubt whether any of my colleagues thinks differently.
The Minister can get away with a series of evasions tonight because there is no vote—and he knows it. He also knows that we shall come back to this issue if he does that. Within eight months, at the most, we shall be on that side of the House, going over the books and examining the estimates supplied by British Aerospace. We shall try to work out how the Treasury and the Minister came to such different estimates of the profitability of this project.
I hope we shall conclude that the Treasury took an unduly pessimistic view, but it would help us to give support to British Aerospace if the Minister could explain how such a divergent view arose in two different Departments which must have used the same basic statistics. Those figures could have come from only one source.

2.7 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Industry (Mr. Les Huckfield): The hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) has tried to put his case reasonably and co-

herently but it will be considerably longer than eight months before he has a chance to look at the books from this side of the House.
The subject has the merit of being topical. Stories have circulated about a document, allegedly prepared by Treasury officials, which appeared in The Guardian. I welcome the opportunity to comment on that and to put into perspective some of the arguments which the hon. Member has made tonight.
We must remind ourselves of a few basic facts, unpalatable though they may be to the hon. Member. Before the aerospace industry was taken into public ownership, it was gradually withdrawing from the market for civil aircraft. We can have little doubt about that because no new major civil airliner project had been launched since the early 1960s. The Trident programme was coming to an end.
The hon. Member knows better than I, because of his interests in the industry, that only because of the support of the Labour Government were the HS146 and the BAC 1–11 kept alive. It is true that Hawker Siddeley as a private company had a stake in making the wings for the Airbus A300—but only as subcontractor. It did not have any rights in the management of the programme.
Since nationalisation, British Aerospace has launched or joined two new projects—the BAC 146 and the Airbus A310. This truly reflects the determination of British Aerospace—which the Government back—to maintain a presence in the civil aircraft market. I wish that we had had the same determination expressed a little more often from the Opposition Benches.
I am sure that the decision of British Aerospace is right. I am sure, also, that the Government's action in backing that decison was right. It is right for British Aerospace and for the whole of the aerospace industry. I include in that the engine and equipment manufacturers, who, the hon. Gentleman knows better than I do, would be considerably weakened if there were no strong civil air-frame industry. To take any other view would be to take a further step towards the de-industrialisation of the country.
What we are talking about is the largest aerospace company in Europe. It now


has a wider product range than any other aerospace company in the Western world. A good deal of that arises solely because of nationalisation. Its products include military aircraft, guided weapons and civil aircraft. I say firmly to the hon. Member that in all of those areas British Aerospace has competitive products to offer. For evidence of that we have only to look at the substantial increase which has taken place in the order book since nationalisation. We want to develop a coherent strategy. We do not want British Aerospace to become a specialist military manufacturer. We can see the difficulties in that when it is necessary to depend on orders from places such as Iran.
We want British Aerospace to draw strength for its business from all three areas that I have mentioned—military and civil aircraft and guided weapons. We believe that this means that British Aerospace needs to maintain a substantial capability for the design and manufacture of civil aircraft. We want to keep our design and manufacturing teams together because we believe that they are winning teams.
Tory Members have pressed us hard on numerous occasions—the hon. Gentleman has done so from the Opposition Front Bench—to take decisions. We have been urged to take a decision this way or that. The hon. Gentleman even—at one stage last year—led a team of his hon. Friends to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to urge the Government to support the British Aerospace industry. He and his colleagues have urged the Government to take a longer-term view. He is on record as saying that we would have to give support to a British aerospace industry in future.

Mr. Tebbit: Purely as a matter of fact, I have never led a deputation of my colleagues to the Prime Minister on this matter.

Mr. Huckfield: The hon. Gentleman may not have been in the lead. It is very modest of him to say so—

Mr. Tebbit: Nor have I been led.

Mr. Huckfield: I am sure that if the hon. Gentleman asks his colleagues he will find that those deputations took place and made that very point.
It ill-behoves the hon. Gentleman to attempt to berate—even in the reasonable manner that he adopted—the Government for trying to spend money on supporting civil aircraft projects when, time and again, the Opposition have urged the Government to support the British aerospace industry and to support one project or another. That is the kind of pressure that they have maintained. That is the nature of the parliamentary questions which they have been tabling. The hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do that we had many debates on the choices facing British Aerospace last year. All the while we were urged to take decisions. We were urged to look to the long-term future of our aerospace and aircraft manufacturing capability.
The hon. Gentleman knows that the choice came down to roughly two options. British Aerospace could either have become a risk-bearing subcontractor to Boeing, or it could have joined Airbus Industrie. It rejected the link with Boeing on strictly commercial grounds. The hon. Gentleman laid great stress on commercial viability. In the view of the Corporation, with which the Government concurred, what Boeing was offering would not have maintained its long-term design capability. It would have used only a limited range of skills. It would have required the Corporation to match wide fluctuations in production volume over one of Boeing's programmes. It would not have had the ability, which Boeing possesses, of switching resources between programmes. Above all, we always said that we wanted to preserve as much as possible of our own design and manufacturing capability.
It was for reasons like that—again, we came under considerable pressure from the other side of the House to take these kinds of decisions—that British Aerospace decided that the more attractive option was to join Airbus Industrie as a full member. In doing so, it became a full member of what seems certain to be one of the major forces in the civil aircraft market during the 1980s and the 1990s and, we hope, beyond. The hon. Gentleman referred to the fact that Airbus Industrie has already shown that it is a powerful force. Sales and options for the A300 airbus will soon touch the 200 mark. With the entry of British Aerospace, Airbus Industrie will now become


even stronger. British Aerospace will be contributing to the growth of a powerful European civil aircraft industry. In the longer term that will enable Europe to collaborate or compete with American manufacturers on a basis of equality. That basis of equality is an important point, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman recognises.
I was disappointed with the pocket calculator approach which the hon. Gentleman adopted to these projects. He knows that a wide variety of assessments have to be made before reaching a decision. To adopt the narrow basis of approach, as he has tried to do, belies his considerable experience in these matters.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the Treasury document. I do not want to go into that. I say only that I deplore the way that it has been treated by the Opposition. Even the hon. Gentleman—I shall be quoting remarks he has made—knows that the financial success of an aerospace project depends upon a number of factors such as sales, costs, prices and exchange rates. Over the long life of an aerospace project, these can vary considerably.
There is a range of possibilities. The hon. Gentleman referred to this. In the case of Airbus Industrie, British Aerospace knew that there were uncertainties, but its carefully considered commercial judgment was that the risks of going ahead were less than the benefits to be gained. This was its recommendation to us. The Government, in turn, made a careful and thorough assessment of the project, of which the Treasury assessment was part. We decided to accept the commercial judgment of British Aerospace.
It was strange to hear the hon. Gentleman talk about ranges of possibilities and then urge me to give more details. It was particularly strange in view of what he said last night in the House about Rolls-Royce. Referring to Sir Kenneth Keith, the chairman of Rolls-Royce, he said:
 He goes so far as to attach figures in relation to the profitability of Rolls-Royce and, therefore, of the National Enterprise Board for each cent of movement in the sterling-dollar parity. We have never been given those figures by Ministers. They must be available. I could quote them, but I do not think it is appropriate to do so since Rolls-Royce Ltd. may not want those figures to be widely broadcast although I suspect that the figures are broadly

known to most people in the business."—[Official Report,14 March 1979; Vol. 964, c. 529.]
If what the hon. Gentleman said last night is appropriate for Rolls-Royce, for the reasons that he gave, I would have thought that the mode of consistency and the need to maintain some kind of continuity requires him to advance the same argument in the cause of British Aerospace.
If one were to look only at the risks involved in a project, one would not undertake many projects. In the world of civil aircraft, there are few guaranteed profit-makers. If there were, someone would probably be making them already. Both the hon. Gentleman and myself are familiar with the Boeing 747 project. We have flown in the aircraft many times. Even that project, which is in service with airlines all over the world, is still not making a profit for Boeing. It has been manufactured in Seattle since the 1960s.
The truth is that British Aerospace and Ministers had to consider this range of possibilities, knowing that many of the factors involved were not certainties. However, I reaffirm that British Aerospace decided that the risks were worth taking on commercial and industrial grounds.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the £50 million assistance under the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Act. My answer is the one that I gave him when we discussed some of these matters in the Statutory Instruments Committee. I said to him then, and I say now, that Airbus Industrie is still engaged in breaking into the civil aircraft market and in pushing up its rate of production of aircraft. Consequently, British Aerospace's membership of Airbus Industrie will involve it in losses in the early stages. We have never tried to conceal that.
The returns will come in only slowly at the beginning. I am sure the hon. Gentleman will recognise that as a short-term investment membership of Airbus Industrie has never been seen as a money spinner. However, the board of British Aerospace is deterined that its industry shall be profitable and that it shall pay a proper rate of return on its capital. That determination is buttressed by the requirements of the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Act, namely, that


British Aerospace's financial objective should produce an adequate rate of return on capital.
British Aerospace is currently a highly profitable concern, with a rate of return of about 20 per cent. on net assets. That rate of return will decline over the next few years. That is not because profits will fall, but because the capital employed in the business will increase greatly as work on the new civil programme builds up.
British Aerospace will fund a substantial proportion of its capital expenditure from its own cash flow. Money from external sources will be provided on strictly commercial terms. Loans from the national loans fund will carry the appropriate rate of interest. Public dividend capital will be expected to pay a rate of dividend no less than the interest that would have been paid had the money been advanced as loans. British Aerospace does not want, and the Government would not be prepared to give it, public money as some sort of free handout.
That is the background to the Government's decision to give British Aerospace £50 million assistance under section 45. I freely concede to the hon. Gentleman that in the absence of that assistance membership of Airbus Industrie would have imposed a strain in the short run on British Aerospace's finances. The hon. Gentleman has been going wrong in believing that it is sensible to treat a major strategic decision—we consider the decision to join Airbus Industrie as a full member as such—in isolation and in using only pocket calculator figures, as he has been doing tonight. I say to the hon. Gentleman again that we do not build aircraft with pocket calculators.

Mr. Tebbit: The Minister is sliding away from the central question that I put to him, namely, whether in the long run the investment of money in the Airbus Industrie project will show a return of 20 per cent., which is the return that he was implying we would get when we discussed these matters in Committee. If he wants to make a case for our being in the civil airliner business regardless of whether we make money, there is such a case to be made. I do not say that we would agree with it, but I recognise that there is that case. However, he has until tonight advanced the

case on the basis that we had embarked on a profitable venture. Is it a profitable venture?

Mr. Huckfield: I do not know how many more times I shall have to say it, but British Aerospace must maintain a profitable business, a business that pays its way and generates its capital. That the Corporation is determined to do. Within that constraint it must begin to frame a long-term strategy that does not leave it unduly dependent on a single market or a single type of product. It is the commercial judgment of the British Aerospace board that such a strategy entails maintaining a significant presence in the civil aircraft market. It is considered that the right way of maintaining that presence is as a member of a strong European civil aircraft grouping, making full use of the wide range of skills available in British Aerospace; in other words, by joining Airbus Industrie.
That is the type of consideration that motivated the board of British Aerospace, and that is why the Government are backing the board's judgment. I strongly suspect it was that kind of consideration that led Opposition Members in the Standing Committee on 7 February, including the hon. Member for Chingford, to raise no real objection to the draft order under section 45 empowering the Government to make assistance available to British Aerospace.
It is noticeable that when the hon. Gentleman quoted his own words he omitted a significant sentence. He omitted the following sentence from column 21:
 at this stage to rule out entry would seem to us to be wrong.
He could also have quoted his hon. Friend the Member for Chertsey and Walton (Mr. Pattie), who told the Committee:
 We all know of the importance of the Airbus project.
He could also have quoted his hon. Friend the Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill), who said:
 There is no doubt that we all welcome the involvement of British Aerospace in the Airbus Industrie programme."—[Official Report. Second Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &amp;c,7 February 1979, c. 19–24.]
That was the kind of comment made by Opposition Members in that Committee. That was the praise and support that they gave. Therefore, the hon. Gentleman's


comments in this debate were not on all fours with the support that he expressed in that Committee.
It will be noted that I have said nothing in this debate about employment. I took that course deliberately, because I wanted to emphasise two things. The first was that we took the decision to join Airbus Industrie, as did British Aerospace, on commercial and industrial grounds. But that is not to say that there are no employment consequences. British Aerospace expects that, depending on sales, peak employment on the Airbus work will represent about 5,000 jobs at the factories and a smaller number at their United Kingdom suppliers.
The second point I wish to emphasise is that the case for decisions of the sort that we are discussing tonight does not stand or fall only on financial calculations, important as those are. Both British Aerospace and the Government believed, taking account of both the financial and the wider arguments, that it was right to join Airbus Industrie. We announced that decision in August last year. Since then the prospects of the Airbus programme have significantly improved. Substantial new sales have been made, and additional airlines customers have been secured. By their decisions last year British Aerospace and the Government gave a vote of confidence in the future of the British aircraft industry in the civil aircraft market. All the signs are that that confidence will be fully justified.
We in the Department, and the Government in general, have demonstrated that confidence. I wish that the hon. Gentleman in this debate had continued the lack of opposition that we experienced in the Standing Committee to which I referred. If we follow through what the Opposition were saying on this topic last year and the pressure which they exerted to take the decision that we have now taken, it appears that the hon. Gentleman has departed from the line which his party has been practising, and, indeed, preaching.

Mr. Tebbit: I cannot understand why the Minister is unable to see the problem. In Committee the Minister undertook to ensure that not only the whole of British Aerospace would yield a 20 per cent. return on net assets—which one would expect because of the profitable military

business—but that there would be a 20 per cent. yield on assets invested in the programmes—each of them. I have not referred to the HS146 because it is outside the scope of this debate, but there was to be a return of 20 per cent. Because the Treasury contradicted that, we question whether the Minister was correct in saying what he did. We welcomed that programme, particularly because the Minister said that it would be profitable and return 20 per cent. Now he has moved away from that.

Mr. Huckfield: The Government have not changed one word, dot or comma of my statement in Committee upstairs. The hon. Member has been in the House for some time, and he knows the ropes. He knows that if there is a time to object to something going through, that time is afforded. He had that time upstairs, but he did not use it. In fact, he complimented us then. It is too late for him to change his mind now.

CRIMINAL TRIALS

2.31 a.m.

Mr. Ivan Lawrence: I believe that the question of possible changes in the system of criminal proceedings is important enough to raise in the House, even at this unlikely hour.
My proposals might well have some short-term adverse effect on expenditure from the Consolidated Fund, but they will reap a long-term benefit for the finances and morale of the nation.
I believe that there is more that can and must be done to reduce the appallingly high level of crime that our society endures at present. I do so with some diffidence because I am aware that the case that I am about to attempt to make, although it would enjoy the support of most people in the country, would not meet with the approval of some men of greater epexrience, knowledge and wisdom in the legal and police professions than I can claim. Nevertheless, I speak from the experience of 17 years of regular practice at the criminal Bar and of personal participation in some hundreds of jury trials. I also have had the considerable advantage of discussing these matters at length with my colleagues practising daily in the courts and with friends in the police force.
It is clear that the lawlessness that we now see is due to a breakdown in the fabric of respect for others, which was once a mark of the British way of life. It follows that what is necessary is a reversion to something like society's former attitude to the rule of law. That can be achieved only by education of our children and the example of our leaders, and that will be a long-term matter.
In the shorter term, crime must be checked by deterrents, by putting would-be offenders in fear of the consequences of being found out. Currently there is widespread agreement that deterrents will be improved by creating a larger and more effective police force. Upon that matter the Conservative Party has given a firm and very welcome financial and moral commitment. There is also a demand for sterner sentences, which is usually thought to mean longer sentences, and which, in the present state of hideous overcrowding of our prisons, is clearly impractical. It may well be that we shall have to build more prisons. It may be that the element of sternness would be most suitably achieved by shorter sentences at an earlier stage in the criminal's career. The House may also know my views about capital punishment and corporal punishment for juvenile offenders, but I do not wish to speak about such things now.
I want to argue the case tonight for a third form of deterrent—the certainty of conviction. It is commonly said that the best deterrent is the certainty of being caught. Yet if the criminal considers that he has a better-than-even chance of being set free if he is caught, that is not the best deterrent. A better deterrent is the certainty of being caught and convicted, and the best is surely the certainty of being caught, convicted and punished.
It is an astonishing fact in Britain today that about 50 per cent. of all those who plead"not guilty ", both before the higher courts with juries and the magistrates' courts, are acquitted. In jury trials the acquittals total about 9,000 a year. The magistrates' court figures are even higher. It is difficult to make precise international comparisons because criminal systems are so different, but our acquittal rate seems far higher than that of other countries.
In serious cases in the United States only one person in five is acquitted. In the Netherlands and Norway the figure is one in three. Our acquittal rate is also considerably higher than it was 10, and certainly 20, years ago. The British figures are not merely astonishing; they are alarming. They mean that either a large number of innocent people are being degraded and humiliated as they are dragged through the criminal process, at substantial public expense, or that a large number of guilty people are being set free to commit more crime. Either or both occurrences are shameful and should be unacceptable to a civilised nation.
These figures are inevitably the result of a number of causes—the failure to make adequate use of the section 2 committal procedure, whereby the evidence is sifted in the magistrates' court, perhaps being one recent cause of the high acquittal rate. However, I believe that the largest single cause of the inequity in our system which results in the charging of the innocent, or more probably the acquittal of the guilty, is our stubborn adherence to the thoroughly outdated concept of the right to silence—that is to say, the right that anyone has under our law, be he ever so guilty, to say nothing which might be taken to incriminate him.
It is not so much the pure concept itself that offends as the too frequent sheer impracticality of its operation. It operates harmfully for justice at several stages. The police must tell a suspect that he need not say anything at the very moment when he is most likely to confess his guilt or provide some evidence against himself. Without adding a confession to the evidence against himself, he enhances his chances of acquittal.
The police, all too often finding themselves unable to work in practice with such a ridiculous rule, do not administer the caution. They lie on oath that they did do so and are driven to invent admissions. Juries, seeing the lie, acquit because they feel that they cannot believe anything else the police officer says. Once again the guilty go free. Even if the policeman is utterly honest and administers the caution, and even if the accused admits his guilt, all too often juries find the charade so hard to believe that they acquit and the guilty, once more, go free.
At the trial, the right to silence means that the accused cannot be expected to give evidence, which means that if there is little or no other evidence of guilt the accused may be acquitted at the end of a submission to the judge, or on the verdict of the jury. Once again the guilty may go free.
But the evil to society caused by the operation of this rule goes much deeper. The more the guilty man sees the exasperated police officer ignoring or violating his rights, the more determined he becomes to avoid the consequences of being caught and convicted." It is a fair cop, guv"has long since joined the ranks of the music hall joke.
Since juries, especially in London, have become notoriously cynical about police verbals, and the more the criminals feel they have a chance of getting off, the more they plead not guilty. If they are convicted on false evidence, the greater the chip they have on their shoulders and the more hopeless they are as prisoners. The longer this rule remains in existence, the more young police officers will be attacked for alleged untruthfulness in the witness box and the more demoralised they will become. The more that detectives see that crime pays for the criminal, the more likely it is that some will say"Why should it not pay for me, too?"That is how corruption spreads. The more the public see or believe allegations against the police to be well founded, the more public confidence will be lost in our police force, which is still reputed to be the finest in the world.
Those are the serious and harmful effects of the right to silence in our modern society. It is salutary to recall, as we are reminded by Professor Granville Williams, what that great libertarian Jeremy Bentham had to say about this rule a century and a half ago. He called it one of the most pernicious and irrational notions that ever found its way into the human mind. He said:
 If all criminals of every class had assembled and framed a system after their own wishes, is not this rule the very first that they would have established for their security? Innocence never takes advantage of it; innocence claims the right of speaking, as guilt invokes the privilege of silence.
In more recent years, the demands for the abolition of the right to silence have grown. The police have called repeatedly

for its removal, the judges have continuously passed unfriendly remarks upon it and the Criminal Law Revision Committee recommended its abolition in 1972. This House took note of that recommendation three days before the general election was called in February 1974, and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Sir M. Havers), then the Solicitor-General, said—little thinking, no doubt, that we would lose an imminent election—that it was not the end of the road. Unhappily, it was for a time—until we learn the views of the Royal Commission on criminal procedure which is now sitting.
What has been the difficulty? Why has nothing been done about a rule that is working so badly and is increasingly souring our proud system of justice? The answer, I think, is a mixture of muddled thinking and sheer romanticism. Old rules die hard and traditional rights are well nigh indestructible.
There is a misconception abroad that to abolish the right to silence is to abolish the presumption of innocence. They are, of course, not the same thing, nor does the abolition of one necessarily lead to the abolition of the other—nor, indeed, is the one nearly so important as the other in the protection of the freedom of the individual against the power of the State.
Six years later, fewer members of the Bar would be prepared to treat the right to silence as a sacred cow, as they once did back in 1973. Certainly, with all attempts to reduce crime seeming to fail and the criminal courts working ever more unsatisfactorily, many will be disposed at least to have another look at the matter. In truth, the main objections to interference with the right to silence did not then bear too close examination.
It was said that its abolition would destroy an important bastion of the liberty of the individual and would make the conviction of the innocent more likely. To begin with, the right to silence has long since lost any pretensions to being a bastion of anything. It may have been a bastion when it was conceived as a reaction to the iniquities of the Star Chamber or when, in the last century, the accused was not even allowed to give evidence on his own behalf, or when the death penalty was used for trivial offences. It may have been a bastion when the


police were less hard-pressed or when, as Lord Devlin has pointed out, there was little organised crime and people were fundamentally law-abiding.
Today, when protections have been established, such as the right to give evidence, with the abolition of torture, with more thorough and inquiring trials, and with more intelligent juries, the former bastion has become nothing but an archaism. It is but a ruin of its former self, for again the truth is that there is not much of the right left with which to protect the accused. What an accused says to witnesses other than police officers and similar officials is admissible in evidence against him without warning. What he says to the police before he is reminded of his right to silence is admissible in evidence against him.
On the authority of the case of Osborne v. Virtue in the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, in 1973, a police officer
 is not bound to caution until he has got some information which he can put before the court as the beginnings of a case ";
in other words, until he has a prima facie case. There is strictly no need to caution a suspect right up to the time that he can be charged.
If the suspect is reminded of the caution and says anything at all, he can be attacked for not saying everything or something consistent with his defence. If his defence is an alibi, he must disclose it within seven days of the preliminary hearing in the magistrates' court, together with the names and addresses of his witnesses. If he gives no evidence at his trial, as is his right, the judge can, and frequently does, make such hostile comment as"There is one person here today who was there and could have told you what happened, and he has preferred to exercise his right to say nothing."
How much is left to defend of this once great bastion? The ravages of time have worn it away but I suppjose there will still be some quixotic characters defending it long after it has disappeared altogether, for the myth will remain. If there is little or nothing left, you may ask, Mr. Deputy Speaker, where is its harm? Its harm comes largely from the fact that people believe that it has substance. An example is the ridiculous assertion by, of all people, some of my colleagues in the

Criminal Bar Association that the right to silence is:
 the individual's…only safeguard against oppression or malpractice by the police.
What guarantee is there, as things are, that a malpractising police officer has, in fact, warned a suspect of his right to say nothing? Why, none at all. What guarantee is there, as things are, that a malpractising police officer, infuriated with the silence of a suspect, will not invent an oral confession of guilt? Why, none at all. Have we not had a stern reminder since 1973 of the hollowness of the right to silence when Sir Robert Mark had to get rid of 400 London policemen, all operating notwithstanding the right of silence?
I must confess to having some difficulty in understanding why a system that encourages and harbours any propensity in a police officer to verbal or falsify the evidence against a suspect, who may be an innocent person, is not considered a greater threat to individual liberty than not having such a system. It is nothing but a screen behind which great mischief may be, and often is, done unseen. Take away the screen and all will be open to the light of day and a lot more wholesome.
But there are yet other dangers for the innocent in this archaism. I wonder how many suspects have been stopped from explaining their innocence at the earliest possible moment by being warned that it was better to say nothing. How many might have avoided a charge, a trial or even a conviction if they had told the police where they were, what they were doing and who they were with? How many innocent people might there be who were wrongly believed by the jury to have delayed their explanation in order to invent an excuse or an alibi? How many policemen might have been stopped from giving false and incriminating evidence if the suspect had given them an early verifiable explanation? Is is realistic to assume that the modern, better-educated juryman will be impressed by the spectacle of a man with much to answer for seeking refuge in his technical rights when common sense dictates that an innocent man of the meanest intelligence would have denied his guilt and given some explanation?
I do not think overmuch of the arguments of those who seek to defend the


right to silence. Some might have been influenced by the extremism of the Criminal Law Revision Committee. It went too far the other way in proposing that silence should be corroborative of other evidence of guilt and in suggesting that silence should be prima facie evidence of guilt before a magistrate considering whether to commit a case to trial. It is one thing to say that a presumption of innocence should not automatically follow from silence but quite another to say that there should be circumstances in which silence involves a presumption of guilt. Sometimes when we go too far we tend to damage our case and to put people off. I shall certainly try to avoid that trap.
The first stage of the creation of a criminal process more suitable for the 1980s may therefore involve little more than the passing of a law stating that henceforth no presumption of innocence shall necessarily follow from the silence of a suspect or accused person and the devising of a new form of words to inform the suspect of the position.
Although such a law would remove much of the frustration and many of the unsatisfactory features of the present system, with its right to silence, it would be futile to pretend that it would not still be necessary to have a more reliable account of the interrogation of a suspect at a police station than a police officer's notebook. Although it is open to police officers to take signed written statements from the accused, it is surprising how frequently a confessing criminal refuses to put his confession into writing and how seldom the accused is invited to sign the police officer's contemporaneous note.
What is clearly needed is a record of the interview that is not open to serious challenge or dispute. In this technological age the obvious candidate for that service is the tape recorder, and that is a matter with particular implications for expenditure out of the Consolidated Fund.
It is not surprising that some, though by no means all, police officers should be hesitant about requiring all interviews with a suspect at a police station which may be adduced in evidence at a trial to be tape recorded. Such police officers probably feel threatened in the same way as lorry drivers do at having the

tachograph in their cab. Yet while comfort and freedom from perpetual vigilance might be a justifiable argument for a lorry driver, it can scarcely be a justifiable argument for a police officer who, if acting rightly, would have nothing to fear from occasional electronic supervision.
We need from the Government a determined effort to persuade the police that it is to the advantage not only of society but of the police themselves that they should be rid of the constant and, unhappily, widespread stigma attached to them through the verbals. Alas, there has not been much sign of Government enthusiasm for the task.
The Criminal Law Revision Committee, way back in June 1972, recommended by a majority that an experiment be conducted into the feasibility of tape recorded interviews. A minority of three of the 13 recommended that there should be statutory provision for the compulsory use of tape recorders at police stations in larger centres of population. But it was not until February 1975 that a committee was set up to consider the feasibility of an experiment in tape-recorded interrogations. It took 18 months for that to produce the inevitable conclusion that an experiment would be feasible, although there would be many difficulties.
The committee considered that it was not its task to form a collective view about the desirability of conducting an experiment, still less the desirability of a general system of tape recording police interrogations. The Home Secretary told the House that he wanted to consult widely and invite comment. In July 1977 he told us that tape recording fell within the ambit of the Royal Commission on criminal procedure. He has, I believe, indicated that he would appreciate an early decision in this matter. That would be most welcome, but the sooner a start can be made on the pilot scheme, the sooner will the unnecessary fears be shown to be of little substance, and the sooner will justice benefit. Will the Minister give an undertaking to begin tape recording immediately the Royal Commission reports, if it recommends that?
The virtues of tape recording are obvious and substantial, while the arguments against it have so far been thoroughly unconvincing. It is said that


tape recorders might stop the suspect from talking and admitting his guilt. But does not the caution already tend to do that? Is not that argument a tacit admission that cautions are not at present usually administered? Is not that precisely one of the evils that we are trying to avoid?
It is said that a suspect could make an untrue allegation of bribery or assault to spoil his confession. Of course he could. But he would hardly be likely to be making a reliable admission of guilt at the same time. That situation exists at present, so it would not be creating a problem where none now exists.
Further, there is a considerable risk facing any suspect making such an allegation. If the jury did not believe the allegation of bribery or brutality, it would be the end of the accused's credibility, and that message would not take long to get round the criminal fraternity.
It is said that tapes can be tampered with, and so they can. But so sophisticated is the technology today, even two years after the feasibility report, that I am assured that there is little risk of successful tampering if, as was recommended, the tapes were made in triplicate and the defence, prosecution and court were each handed a copy. Any atempt at tampering would be likely to be completely counter-productive.
The simple answer to tampering and false allegations would be to videotape-record interviews. The feasibility committee brushed that to one side as being too costly, and I therefore ask the Minister whether the Government have any up-to-date estimate of the likely cost of videotaping. Cases at the Old Bailey can cost around £1,000 a day, and it therefore seems somewhat unrealistic to cavil at capital and running costs which for ordinary tape recording could cost £30,000 for 5,000 persons making statements, and for videotape recording could cost, I suspect, little more than £150,000.
The advantage of tape recording interviews, even of the non-pictorial kind, have been recognised by the former judge Sir Henry Fisher in his report on the Confait inquiry in December 1977. He hoped then that an experiment would be carried out. The former head of the regional crime squad, Leonard"Nipper"Read,

said on BBC television last Sunday that he thought there should be videotape recording.
It is difficult to see the case for a combined abolition of the right of silence and tape recorded interviews as other than overwhelming. To begin with, we may already have a generation of adults who are so much at home with their own tape recorders and see them being used to such an extent in television films in police interrogations that they might begin to wonder what is up if police officers refuse to tape record interviews.
With the tape recorder there would be less opportunity for the police falsely to allege a confession. There would be less opportunity for an accused person falsely to allege police dishonesty. Because police officers would be less often challenged as liars and less often thought to be dishonest, their standing in the community would rise. Their morale would be higher and it would be easier to recruit the best people to the police service. Fewer police officers would be tempted to become dishonest and eventually corrupt, and even fewer would bring dishonour upon their calling.
If the circumstances surrounding the making of a statement were less open to criticism, more who were guilty would feel obliged to plead guilty. Cases would be shorter to try. Trials would come on sooner after arrest. The memory of witnesses would have less time to fade. Their evidence would become more reliable, and fewer acquittals would result from that reason alone.
In short, crime would become easier to fight because the conviction of the guilty would become more certain, and there would be a strong deterrent to crime. The money that the country would save from a more efficient legal system would repay handsomely any increase of expenditure from the Consolidated Fund. The reduction of crime which would inevitably result would reflect handsomely upon the fortunes of any Government with the courage, determination and vigour to initiate these two necessary reforms. The present Government are unlikely to survive the Royal Commission's report. My hope is that the next Conservative Government will have that courage, as I know that they will have both determination and vigour.

2.57 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Dr. Shirley Summerskill): I agree with a lot of what has been said by the hon. Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence) but not with his peroration. If the hon. Member is so convinced that the Government will not survive the Royal Commission's report, I wonder why he has spent a lot of time in the middle of the night trying to persuade them to implement what he thinks will be the decisions of the Royal Commission.
However, the hon. Member has raised some important and controversial matters. As he recognises, they are central to the issues referred to the Royal Commission on criminal procedure. I understand that the Royal Commission has received a large number of pieces of evidence, and no doubt it will take due note of what the hon. Member has said this evening. Because these matters are within the subject matter of the Royal Commission, my remarks tonight are speculative rather than definitive, and if they bear in places a close relation to the published Home Office evidence to the Royal Commission I hope the hon. Member will understand why. This is not because we regard what is in the Home Office evidence as in any way the last word on the subject. It is simply that our evidence reflects our thoughts on these matters at this stage.
The term"right of silence"is used to describe a situation at two different points in the criminal process. It is a kind of shorthand phrase. The individual's right of silence is irremovable, in the sense that no one can be compelled to speak against his will, either when being questioned by the police or when being prosecuted in court. When we speak of modifying or removing the right of silence, we mean changing the rules regarding the inferences that can be drawn, when a person is prosecuted, in the one case about his failure to mention facts when being questioned by the police, and in the other regarding his failure to enter the witness box or to answer questions.
There are two types of silence. The first is during the investigation of the offence. The Criminal Law Revision Committee proposed that adverse inference might be drawn in court from the

failure of the defendant, when being questioned by the police, to mention any fact upon which he subsequently relies in his defence. In this connection the committee also considered the use of tape recorders in criminal investigation and, as the hon. Gentleman recognised, a majority recommended that there should be experiments in their use.
Secondly, as regards silence at the trial stage, the committee recommended that it should be permissible for the court or jury to draw such inferences as are appropriate from the failure of the defendant to enter the witness box or to answer particular questions. The common thought behind these suggestions is that the silence of the suspect can be a protection to the guilty but rarely to the innocent.
The proposal directed at the right of silence in the police station has proved particularly controversial. It is therefore important to spell out what any limitation of the present right would and would not achieve. In the first place, there is no way in which a suspect can be compelled to answer questions at the police station, even if he chooses not to do so. Secondly, if he remains silent and there is no relevant and admissible evidence, he cannot be put on trial. In other words, whatever inferences the police may draw about a suspect's probable guilt from his silence, they cannot ask a court to draw such inferences unless a prima facie case is established by other means. If a case reaches court, abolition of the right of silence at the police station would mean that the prosecution would be able to make what some would consider fair comment about the late production of a version of events designed to support a claim of innocence. Equally, abolition ought in strict logic to do no harm to the innocent person who should, in principle and within the limitations of memory, be willing to tell the truth to the police from the outset.
Those opposed to the Criminal Law Revision Committee's proposals have argued that they would penalise not only the guilty person who deliberately wished to conceal information from the police but those who, through ignorance or innocence, omitted to mention a relevant fact which subsequently proved necessary for their defence. This might come about for perfectly respectable reasons; for


example, where an innocent suspect wishes to avoid implicating another in an embarrassing situation or where he is unaware of the precise details of the offence under investigation and is therefore not in a position to judge what facts are relevant and what are not.
Some opponents of the committee's proposals have argued that a change which might have this effect is basically unfair and that it would change the whole balance of criminal justice by subverting the principle that a person is presumed innocent until proved guilty. Others have suggested that wider comment by the judge on a defendant's failure to mention a relevant fact to the police should be permissible, but only if such a change were accompanied by a scheme for supervising or monitoring questioning at police stations. The latter approach is in line with the minority of the Criminal Law Revision Committee who recommended that the committee's proposal as to the right of silence should not be implemented until a system of tape recording had been introduced. These issues are canvassed in the Home Office evidence to the Royal Commission without any clear conclusion being relevant.
Turning now to the right of silence at the defendant's trial, the present law is that, under the Criminal Evidence Act 1898, an accused person cannot be compelled to give evidence in his own defence and his failure to testify may not be the subject of comment by the prosecution. It is not altogether clear how far the judge, as distinct from the prosecution, can properly go in commenting on the failure of the accused to give evidence, and in particular how far he can go in telling the jury what account it may take of his failure to do so. But it does appear to be the case that the judge's comments must not suggest that failure to give evidence is enough to lead to an inference of guilt. The Criminal Law Revision Committee expressed the opinion that this position was too favourable to the defence and considered that, once a prima facie case had been made against the accused, it should be regarded as incumbent on him to give evidence in all ordinary cases if he wanted to avoid adverse inferences being drawn from his silence.
The Home Office's published evidence to the Royal Commission recognises that there is some force in this argument. The trial, unlike the police investigation, takes place after a prima facie case has been made out against the accused, before the eyes of the jury and the general public, and subject to the vigilance of appellate tribunals. Unlike the suspect at the police station, who may be tempted to remain silent in the belief that the police know less than the whole truth and that by speaking he may only incriminate himself further, the accused in court is aware of the full extent of the prosecution case against him. If it were to become the position that the court or the jury could draw such inferences as seem reasonable from the accused's silence at that stage, it would not of course in any way reduce the burden of proof on the prosecution to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt.
Clearly, the issues raised by the question of modifying the right of silence have wide-ranging implications affecting the balance which needs to be drawn between the interest of society in ensuring that offenders are brought to justice and the rights and liberties of the individual. For this reason, the question is clearly central to the terms of reference of the Royal Commission. Much of the evidence submitted to the Commission, including that of the Home Office, has commented on the proposals of the CLRC. It is for the Royal Commission to consider the evidence submitted to it and to attach to it such weight as it judges appropriate. Meanwhile, until we have received the Commission's report, it would be premature for the Government to consider putting forward any specific proposals for change. I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman's question was hypothetical about what the Government would do if the Commission reported in a certain way. We must wait for its report and see what it says first.
The hon. Member argued in favour of linking the right of silence at the police station to the introduction of tape recording. This is one possible variant of the CLRC proposals. There are others. One is that the withdrawal of the right of silence should be linked to the presence of a solicitor during questioning by the police. These and other possibilities are mentioned in the Home Office evidence to the Royal Commission.
The tape recording of police interrogations is frequently proposed as a means of resolving disputes about what takes place between a suspect and the police. The argument is that tape recording would give the court the best possible account of what happens during an interrogation; that it would enable disputes about what took place during an interview to be quickly resolved and thus reduce the time spent by courts in"trials within trials "; and that it would deter the use of any unfair questioning methods by the police.
The contrary argument is that tape recording might in effect give rise to more disputes about what the suspect said and might result in any evidence which had not been recorded being regarded as inferior. In addition, the introduction of a general system of recording would have substantial manpower and financial costs and would present problems in transcribing. While it does not follow that all recordings would have to be transcribed, it seems likely that any lawyer engaged in a criminal case about which there was dispute would consider it his duty to ask for a transcript. Whatever the other advantages, and while I should not wish to commit my right hon. Friend at this stage, it does seem to us that the problems associated with transcripts must almost certainly rule out the general introduction of tape recording of all questioning of all suspects.
That is one reason why the Home Office evidence to the Royal Commission tentatively suggests another approach. It might be possible to envisage an arrangement whereby the police would make a recording of any questioning at a police station and hand it over to the court. It would not be available to either side and would not be admissible as evidence in the normal way. But it would be available to the court and could be consulted by the judge, who could authorise its production.
Such an approach would involve a considerable innovation in the law of evidence. It would not end the problem of verbals, since there would always be a possibility that oral statements which, for perfectly valid reasons, had not been tape recorded would be brought before

the court. But we thought it at least worth floating this proposal in the Home Office evidence, and we should welcome further public discussion on it.

Mr. Lawrence: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for putting forward a new proposal, so novel that I have never heard of it before. Will she explain what would be its value, if it was not evidence and if it was not available to either party in the proceedings, and if it did not do away with the principal problem in the whole proceedings—the verbal?

Dr. Summerskill: I agree that it has its limitations, in the same way as other proposals have their limitations, which I have outlined. This would certainly be available to the court, and it could be consulted by the judge.
The hon. Member implied that some of the difficulties to which I have drawn attention might have been resolved if we had gone ahead with an experiment at an earlier stage. I accept that it has taken a long time to make progress on this issue. But the report of the Home Office committee was very far from universally welcomed. As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has reported to the House, we thought it desirable, before reaching any decision on an experiment, to seek the views of the Royal Commission. I understand that the Commission has now itself decided to undertake a study, that it is based on overseas experience in tape recording, and that work has begun on an operation study into the cost and organisational implications of tape recording. The Commission also hopes to be able to conduct a much more limited live experiment in tape recording.
The hon. Member has drawn attention to a number of important issues, including even videotape recording. I think that at present attention is concentrated on the tape recording experiment.
As the hon. Gentleman will appreciate, the many complexities of the subject cannot be dealt with fully in a debate such as this, but I hope he will accept that until we have seen the Commission's report it would be wrong for the Government to consider the introduction of specific changes in this controversial and important field.

PEACHEY PROPERTY CORPORATION LIMITED

Mr. Bob Cryer:: I welcome this opportunity to initiate again a debate about a Department of Trade report. I express my thanks to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Trade, who is here in the early hours of the morning to discuss the issue.
When the Department produces such reports, some of which are extremely good, Parliament should take the trouble to debate them. I want to refer to one such report, in addition to the one that is the subject matter of this debate. Such debates as this should be initiated by the Government. These matters should not be left to be raised on the Consolidated Fund Bill. The last time there was a debate on a Department of Trade report was on 4 August 1976, when I initiated a similar debate on the Lonrho report.
I am sorry that some of those hon. Members who expressed concern when the Peachey report came out are not here tonight. I understand that they have many, no doubt pressing, commitments, but these issues must be faced and debated. The House should seek a more general opportunity than the Consolidated Fund Bill debate.
The Peachey report is rather mild. Even the authors anticipated, in paragraph 26, its being called a whitewash. The only person who is criticised is Sir Eric Miller. In paragraph 32 we read that he was
 guilty, at the very least, of most grave wrongdoing.
Unfortunately, Sir Eric Miller is conveniently dead. His death is extremely convenient for many people, because it appears that he is the only person who is to any degree culpable within the Peachey company. Nor does the report shed much light on how the whole system operated-The inspectors take the view—their analysis is not particularly penetrating—that everybody was subordinate to the whiz-kid Sir Eric Miller.
The directors are all acquitted of any responsibility. The report is careful to point out that the non-executive directors were rubbing along on only £4,000 a year in 1976, plus a company car. It is worth

making a comparison here with people who are making claims for much smaller sums but who are exercising important responsibilities.
Having said that the directors were not responsible for the misdeeds, the inspectors point out that the people lower down the ladder were not responsible for any misdeeds. In paragraph 77 they refer to a Mr. H. T. James and say that he was
 in his own words, ' quite well down the ladder ', and we do not criticise him for falling in with a system which was known to and tacitly approved by directors and other senior employees, but personally operated by the chairman, and chief executive ".
But if the directors did not have some measure of responsibility, who did in this company? It seems that every employee can simply shrug off the degree of responsibility which should be ascribed to him.
One of the features of the Peachey report and the reason why it attracted such wide publicity was that it revealed a lavish life-style which only surfaces now and again in the gossip columns of the daily newspapers. It affronted people because they saw two standards.
Of course, it may be argued, and no doubt is argued in many places—notably in and about the cocktail bars of May-fair—that if all the Miller and the Peachey wealth were distributed it would mean just a tiny amount to all those who are concerned and grumbling about it. That is not the issue. The issue is one of justice and fairness. If, for example, ordinary working people are asked to undertake three years of wage restraint, the whole of society should make the sacrifice, not just the ordinary workers, with exemptions for the high-living elite of society who can ignore the general sacrifices which have to be made in a difficult economic situation.
When ambulance men, nurses and lorry drivers make claims, they do so in the knowledge that unless and until they press their claims their worth in society will be ignored, because we live in a society in which a tiny inward-looking elite group look at themselves and say"In our view we are worth x thousands of pounds a year "—£20,000, £30,000 or £40,000. I shall come to specific examples of that covered by the Peachey report.
That attitude is understood and seems to be accepted in certain quarters. Many people talk about the executive market place, saying that talent and ability are available only at so many thousands of pounds a year, because ability and greed go hand in hand and a person has no commitment to exercise that talent and ability except on the basis of financial gain. That is why lorry drivers say that they have to demonstrate their importance to society through strike action.
That is what has happened. It has happened with the ambulance men. It has happened with the Health Service workers. It has happened with the local authority workers. Happily, in many of those areas settlements have been achieved, but in the background the stark contrast between a tiny group in society and ordinary working men and women is felt bitterly and grievously, and the Peachey report emphasised the position of these two strata of society.
The report states that these relatively highly paid people—the executive and non-executive directors—were overwhelmed by Sir Eric Miller's personality and were not to blame. One of the characteristics of a hierarchical society such as this is that the higher one goes the more responsibility one has. This is reflected in the amount of money one receives. The report states that Mr. Whitehill, a financial consultant, received a retainer of £20,000 per annum. From June 1975 this was increased to not less than £27,000 per annum. He was then told by the chairman to have nothing further to do with the accounts and to stay away. I find it extraordinary that a person should receive a pay increase of that astronomical size and be told to have nothing further to do with the accounts. But the conclusion of the investigators is that he had no duty to reveal any doubts that he had about the probity of some of the chairman's actions.
The company secretary, Mr. Wall, received a similar sum. He, too, is not exactly criticised in depth by the report. Paragraph 510 states that Mr. Whitehill  probably owed no duty in law to disclose his suspicions or beliefs ".
That is an example of the nation's double standards.
When Liverpool gravediggers want to demonstrate their importance and their right to earn £45 or £50 a week and they stay away from work, a different standard is adopted by the House. I can remember the serried ranks of Conservatives—and one or two of my hon. Friends, unfortunately—standing up in total condemnation of ordinary workers who were demonstrating their importance to society. There was no question but that there was a degree of duty in law to put the bodies in the graves. That was said repeatedly. The Opposition are talking of taking legal action against certain trade unionists, but the Leader of the Opposition has not requested legal remedies for the deficiencies revealed in the Peachey report.
It is extraordinary that a man should be paid £27,000 in one year—a sum which the ordinary worker would take 10 years to earn. It is not surprising that people feel deeply outraged that an official report says that for this money no significant responsibility accrues and that there is no duty in law for that man to disclose his suspicions or beliefs.
Paragraph 513 states:
 Mr. Wall was in a strange position: others might have acted differently ".
That is hardly a critical comment about a company secretary when the chairman was busy using the company funds as if they were in his own private bank.
What about the auditors? Under our system, nationally known auditing partnerships investigate a company's books. They are supposed to reveal deficiencies of the type which occurred. The auditors also come off pretty lightly. The report says in paragraph 80:
 At the outset we feel that we must dispose of a matter concerning PPC and PW which was given prominence in the Press. This was the acquisition by PW of the offices which they presently occupy, Southwark Towers, London Bridge Street, London, SE1. This property stands on property owned by British Rail, a long lease of which was negotiated by Peachey in 1972. It was the original intention that Peachey should retain a share in the main lease although this was later changed so that their share was bought out by PW who now own the whole lease. PW were independently advised throughout by an independent firm of estate agents and we are satisfied that the transaction was concluded on an arm's length basis so that there could be no possibility of any element of bounty or kindness of PPC to PW. Peachey have no continuing interest in the building.
It would have been useful if the inspectors had obtained a statement from the estate agents and incorporated it in the


appendices, or some further evidence, to show why they were satisfied about the nature of the transaction and the conclusion. They could have obtained further evidence which showed why they were satisfied with the nature of the transaction. Price Waterhouse signed accounts when three items of the banking subsidiary of Peachey, Anthony Hutley and Partners, had not been verified. They were not insignificant sums. They were the Lewis Altman loan of £70,000, the Keyser Ullmann deposit of £30,000 and the Asprey necklace of £65,000. These totalled £265,000, which was just under half the profit which had accrued to the company in 1976.
That is not an insignificant sum which the auditors could ignore. Paragraph 519 says:
 A purist might criticise him "—
that is the Price Waterhouse auditor who signed the accounts.
 As realists, we do not.
If auditors are to fulfil their function, I would have thought that significant sums such as this would not be ignored. It seems that £250,000 is a reasonably significant sum, even within the turnover of the Peachey Property Corporation. When it was drawn to the attention of the auditor that there was no verification of these items, something should have been done.
I find the report disappointing in that it does not react strongly enough to that omission by the auditors. If we are to have sound company accounting, we have to rely on auditors acting with complete, utter and ruthless probity. The fact that auditors behaved in that way would be an important deterrent to the Eric Millers of this world. It would help to prevent them from altering accounts and presenting one account as if it was part of a company account when in reality it was a private account. That is the sort of conclusion that the report ought to have reached but unfortunately did not.
Distinguished people were not to be blamed for anything, either. Tommy Trinder got a loan of £10,000, the source of which was never questioned. I have at the back of my mind the thought that when a man receives a packet of nylon stockings, nylon tights or whatever, and says"I got them from a man in a pub and I cannot remember his name ", by

and large that sort of explanation is not accepted. We view the matter somewhat more critically. I would have thought that when people are in receipt of £10,000 there ought to be a shade more scrutiny over the receipt of that money.
Other people who should have known a good deal better got involved with this rather grubby little man, the late Sir Eric Miller. The 1976 resignation honours list is something that we all prefer to forget—as Interpol scours the world for some of its recipients. In my view it would be better for the Labour movement to distance itself from that sort of thing and get rid of the lords and the knights, so that it cannot be said that such baubles are handed out to this, or any, type of person.
As a general rule, the Labour Party should say that no Labour Member of Parliament should accept gifts of any sort worth more than £30. I would accept the same rule for Back Benchers as that by which Ministers have to abide. We ought to say clearly that Labour Members of Parliament should not have directorships. I do not lay down these rules for the Conservatives because presumably they make their own, and I expect them to be greedy in any case. That is part of their philosophy. The Labour Party should say that no directorships or parliamentary advisory posts should be undertaken by Labour Members. We are sent here by working people to represent the values of the Labour movement, which is an idealistic movement. The people expect us to behave with some degree of idealism at least. As a general rule, we should keep our distance from the world of conspicuous consumption that is outlined in the Peachey report, whether it is champagne, cars or such like.
What were the directors who were not to blame—the company secretary and the company financial consultant—approving in a rubber stamp fashion? The words"rubber stamp"are used in the report. Between January 1973 and September 1976, £26,860 went on Miller's personal hotel accommodation. Between 1970 and1977, at the Churchill hotel, Miller's guests cost £35,521. On page 95, one wit ness, the financial consultant, Mr White- hill, spoke of £100,000 spent at the Churchill hotel. Between 1971 and 1973 the company approved a total of £72,741 for yacht hire for a summer family holiday. The yacht holidays provided for the


chairman in the Mediterranean were approved by the company on the pretext that they enhanced the company's business. The report is very weak when it suggests that the company should spend this sort of money—there are slight words of criticism in the report—without pointing firmly at the directors who approved that sort of expenditure. It was clearly a gift horse to Sir Eric Miller to spend a total of £72,000 with the very dubious and vague possibility that one or two potential customers or contacts might be dropping in for"drinkies"on a yacht in the Mediterranean.
The life-style which that denotes is vigorously repudiated by many of us and resented by many working people who are having to eke out a difficult livelihood, particularly the low paid, on wages of £40 or £50 a week.
Appendix C of the report shows, between 1966 and 1976, gifts and gratuities amounting to £310,975. Paragraph 272 makes some mild criticism of these sorts of activities. Sir Eric Miller was using Peachey as a private bank and was involved in a number of subterfuges in order to disguise this from his directors. The combination of inertia by the directors and lack of zest by the auditors allowed him to get away with it for a considerable time. It is an interesting speculation whether, had Sir Eric Miller lived, charges of conspiracy could have been brought against him and other people involved in the company as a result of the expenditure of these moneys, some of which were not authorised by the company and some of which were.
The suspicion is that the directors and the consultants were living too well and too comfortably to disturb things and that this was really the reason why they were not prepared to put up a fight. I am not saying that they were directly benefiting from some of the payments that were made. But there were benefits. The consultants were receiving a substantial remuneration of £27,000 a year. Perhaps there was a feeling that this should go on and that it was wrong to rock the boat and disturb the situation.
On the question of gifts, Miller splashed around a good deal. I raised a question with the Minister of State, Civil Service Department, because a silver chess set was given to the wife of a Minister, the

late Mr. Reginald Maudling. In reply my right hon. Friend said:
 It is a well-established and recognised rule that no Minister or civil servant should accept gifts or services which would, or might appear to, place him under an obligation to any member of the public or organisation with whom he is brought into contact. Although the guidance given to Ministers, unlike the rules for civil servants, does not explicitly mention gifts to a Minister's family, the same principles apply in both cases to gifts to wives."—[Official Report, 8 February 1979; Vol. 962, c.244.]
It might be prudent in the circumstances to pass the silver chess set, which is worth about £3,000 to an organisation such as the Child Poverty Action Group, where the money would come in extremely useful.
It would be helpful if my hon. Friend would consider placing a limit on company gifts in much the same way as a Minister is limited by gifts. The general rule currently is that a gift of £30 is the limit. If a gift is worth more, the Minister has to pay the balance or pass the gift on to the Department. That sort of limit, with the sanction to impose it, would be helpful in getting rid of a sleazy, shady area that keeps bubbling up in the various company reports that the Department of Trade produces.
Gifts are provided not because of a sense of charity on the part of company directors but because people want to place others under an obligation. That is why there is a rule limiting Ministers' gifts. That rule was introduced because of the Poulson scandal, when it was discovered that Poulson was in the habit of passing gifts around lavishly and on a wide basis. To avoid any breath of suspicion, it might as well be useful to consider the possibility of imposing that sort of limitation. When the activities within a company such as Peachey come bubbling to the surface, the question is asked"How many other board rooms are tainted?"
Gifts were lavishly scattered around by the recipients of the Crown Agents' largess. It was difficult to prove that that resulted in loans being advanced by the Crown Agents, but by some strange chance the gifts that were made were always from the recipients of considerable advances from the Crown Agents. It would be beneficial to consider the action that I have suggested and to consider introducing legislation.
The Peachey report should produce results. It should not merely be debated. I hope my hon. Friend will be able to confirm that action will be taken to tighten up auditing and the relationship between companies and directors. In answer to a question on 12 March, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade stated:
 In the light of the inspectors' report into earlier events in that company, I have concluded that it would be desirable further to strengthen the law on financial transactions between companies and their directors. Appropriate amendments will be tabled to the Companies Bill."—[Official Report, 12 March 1979; Vol. 964, c.30.]
I understand that the Department of Prices and Consumer Protection has made a recent announcement that is in today's Financial Times. The effect of it is that it is examining the credit that is being provided by companies to their directors. Perhaps my hon. Friend will be able to clarify the precise proposals that are to be introduced.
Although I am critical of the Peachey report, I am by no means critical of departmental reports in general because they perform a valuable function. However, we must not let such reports gather dust. If they are to have any value, some action must be taken.
Peachey showed a sordid side of capitalism. In my view, the Peachey report is a poor one. I wish to make a brief comparison with the Lonrho report, which was a classic of its type. We debated the matter on 4 August 1976. The Lonrho report also threw up a story of deceit, falsification and concealing information from shareholders. Information which should have been included by law was excluded from circulars.
Let me remind the House of what transpired in that debate. I said:
 So there were people engaged in concealing from the company accounts a payment of £130,000.
Tiny himself, the anti-hero of our drama, was questioned in paragraph 7.47, as follows:
' Therefore, you are committing the company to a six-year contract at £50,000 a year but not telling anybody about it? ' He replied:
' Well I plead guilty to that one because at that stage I was so keen to get Mr. Sandys as Chairman that I agree that I would have done everything possible—this is what I said to him,"I will do everything possible, Duncan, to let this agreement go for the full five or six years on condition, firstly, I am still at

Lonhro in this position and, secondly, that you continue to work for the company effectively." ' ".
I pointed out that there were three prominent people who were busily engaged in concealing information from shareholders. The Lonrho report pointed out the adept way in which those people used tax havens in the Channel Islands to their advantage. I hope that the Minister will say that something will be done to stop up these havens. I know that representatives from the Labour Party have been to the Channel Islands to examine the position there. Because such abuse is now so regular and apparent, I believe that now that we have the Peachey report before us, two-and-a-half years after publication of the Lonrho report, we should be told that some action is contemplated to stop up the tax dodges in the Channel Islands operated by nefarious persons.
Other examples of breaches of the law were mentioned in that debate. Page 519 of the Lonrho report contained the following passage:
 It is our view that the explanation finally incorporated in the directors' report did not give shareholders a fair explanation of what had happened. In particular the omission of the last sentence of the draft left shareholders unaware of the manner in which Mr. Rowland's unlawful loan account had been expunged.
I told the House in that debate:
 That is the extraordinary story of this shabby and sorry saga. I hope that my hon. Friend will bear in mind that what is needed is for the DPP to take a close look at this—in fact, I know that that is happening. He should not be intimidated by the fact that some of these people are in important positions. The Director should undertake prosecutions as and where necessary, because that is in the interests of justice."—[Official Report, 4 August 1976; Vol, 916, c. 2027–34.]
I know that this is not a matter for my hon. Friend, but I find it quite extraordinary that the Attorney-General should study the matter for more than two years and yet not take any action. That is why I look forward eagerly to hearing the Under-Secretary's reply about the consequences of the Peachey report. It is dispiriting to initiate a debate and find two and a half years later that absolutely nothing has been done about Lonrho and that people in very high places appear to have got off scot free.
I want to be able to answer criticisms that there is one rule for the high and mighty in the land and another for the


ordinary person. The ABC trial initiated by the Attorney-General was a complete fiasco and a waste of taxpayers' money. I should have thought that he would have done better to turn his attention to the Lonrho report than to take action against two journalists and a social worker.
The background of this is very important. Only today we read that Lonrho has made a bid for SUITS, and that the Monopolies and Mergers Commission has reported that the bid is not against the public interest. I am concerned about this.
In our debate two years ago, a number of serious matters were brought to light—not only the breaches of company legislation, which are bad enough, but the fact that the principal of Lonrho, Mr. Rowland, made threats against a Member of this House and against a Department of Trade inspector. I quote from page 655 of the report when Mr. Heyman, one of the inspectors who did a good job on this report, was questioning Rowland. Mr. Rowland said:
 It is not a bad company. I am not suggesting you should buy shares in it, but it is not a bad company. It has a super future, unless you want to kill it. I can see things that this company can do that you cannot perhaps see. You see, Mr Heyman, the past, and I have got an idea what the future could be depending on whether you want to kill it. But, by God, it has got one thing, and that is it has got a protector, and that is me. In other words anybody who wants to kill that company has got to have a sub-machine gun, mortars, guns, all sorts of ammunition, because I am going to protect it to the bitter end. Believe me, Mr Heyman, in me you have got somebody you have got to fight when it comes to Lonrho.
That was a curious mixture of similes used by Mr Rowland, coupled with his very aggressive manner throughout the whole report and aggressive attitude to a number of people, described vividly by the inspectors.
I wonder whether this collection of people who have been shown to be lawbreakers, with certainly a tendency towards violence, should be allowed loose in Scotland. They will be in a position of considerable commercial involvement, and will have ownership of a significant proportion of the press there. We should have a very careful examination of the sort of people involved to see whether they are fit and proper to extend their influence.
The two reports I have mentioned demonstrate clearly that capitalism is a powerful force for the encouragement of greed and corruption unless it is extremely carefully monitored and controlled. A Labour Government must be seen to act against such people and activities.
I want to see a tightening of company legislation. I have already raised this matter. I hope that the Minister will outline where the amendments to the current company legislation will be made. Prosecutions should be undertaken where necessary.
We must ensure that none of this undesirable activity goes on in our mammoth corporations, which have more economic power than many small Governments. That is where the arrogance of people such as Tiny Rowland develops. We must institute planning agreements to ensure that corporations work in conformity with the national interest and not in their own narrow interest or what they see as the shareholders' interest. An example of this is provided by the way in which Thorn works. I do not associate Thorn with Peachey or Lonrho.
We know very little about what goes on in company board rooms, which are closed to the outside. We get inside only as observers, either as members of the public or as public representatives, when a crisis develops. Thorn makes vast profits. It closes down factories arbitrarily, as it did in Bradford, and appears to behave in an economic way which is entirely against the interests of the nation. Yet it is not called to account. We must call these companies to account—but not only in a crisis where, as a result of a court action or a revelation leaked to a newspaper, board room corruption is revealed.
We should introduce industrial democracy as a matter of urgency. It is for my hon. Friend, in conjunction with the Department of Industry, to ensure that the books are opened to workers. Workers employed by Peachey and Lonrho—in the Peachey report the inspectors gave examples of many who had given much loyal service to their companies—are deeply offended by the malpractices that take place. It is important to open the books to the workers. The intimidation that appears to have been generated by Sir Eric Miller resulted in a craven bunch of inert directors and


people who were simply not prepared to stand up and argue against the chairman on the certain facts. That situation would not occur if the books were opened to inspection. The activities revealed in the Peachey report were possible because the world of the board room is closed and is not subject to scrutiny, except auditing scrutiny. In any case, the report points out that the auditing scrutiny is not always satisfactory.
It is an old cliché that the workers of the world create the wealth. They have a right to know what is going on within the board room. We understand that there are questions of commercial confidence. That problem must be solved. But it is not impossible of solution if the will is there. That opportunity, if given to the workers, will act as an important check against malpractice. We must go forward. The check must be available as a right and not at the discretion of the board.
The tightening up of auditing procedure is important. The auditors get off almost scot free in this report. That is not good enough. Companies, the people who work for them, the Government and the national interest depend heavily on the probity, efficiency and effectiveness of auditors.
We must ensure a full sense of responsibility on the part of company directors and consultants. I cannot accept that people earning £27,000 a year have no area of responsibility. We must look into that. I hope that my hon. Friend will bring these comments to the attention of the Department of Employment. We must, either under the company legislation or the Employment Protection Act, ensure that there is an obligation on consultants to work in the fullest and best interests of the community as a whole, including the companies. We should introduce limits on gifts to and from company directors.
In my view, we ought to ensure that senior civil servants are kept well away from company board rooms, because that is an area where the influence brought about by accepting the values of capitalism can become all too persuasive and all too pervasive. The blame can very easily be put on the backs of trade unionists when the real problem is that the attitudes of the board room prevail within the circles of senior civil servants.
One can point to the example of Sir Anthony Part. When he left the Department of Industry he leapt eagerly into a number of board rooms, including that of Lucas Aerospace. The workers there feel very resentful that this should have happened, because they would claim, with some justification, that the Department was not the most enthusiastic supporter of the trade unionists' combine development plan. They feel that there may well be a connection between the two things.
In order to ensure complete impartiality and the removal of the suspicion that a permanent secretary can prepare the way for his retirement with two or three comfortable directorships, our Labour Government must make clear that the transition from retired civil servant to board room is at an end. We ought to extend the boundaries of public ownership so that the commanding heights of the economy are brought into public ownership. That is one of the important answers to the over-mighty corporations which look inwardly and where the tiny groups of people in control owe no responsibility to the community at large. They must be brought into public ownership under workers' control, so that the behind-closed-doors secrecy and the lining of pockets through the abuse of funds, which occurred in Peachey and in Lonrho, are ended. This is an evolving position. I am not suggesting that companies such as Peachey are necessarily on the commanding heights, but clearly Lonrho is assuming a commanding position, and it should therefore be a candidate for public ownership so that we can ensure that it acts in the public interest.
We ought seriously to consider having regular debates in the House on issues of this sort. When the Peachey report came out, I was asked repeatedly by the media"Will you press for a further inquiry?"There is not much point in having a further inquiry without debating the inquiry that we have had already. The House of Commons is the most important assembly in the country. If we do not take action, why should there be pressure for further inquiries, further action and further legislation arising out of the reports which have been presented to Parliament? My answer at that stage was that Parliament itself is a protection,


by virtue of the publicity, by virtue of the analysis and by virtue of the pressure on the Ministers and on the Government to get something done when omissions and inefficiencies are revealed.
I have not noted that the Public Accounts Committee has been pressing for debates on this important matter or urging that there should be a wide-ranging examination of the probity and conduct of important public and private companies. There should be further regular debates. These matters should not be left simply to Back Benchers who manage to get the fourteenth place in the Consolidated Fund debate.
I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will send a copy of the report to the Lord President of the Council, with the message that, no matter who may be involved in reports of this kind, whether they are members of the Conservative Party or members of the Labour Party, we are concerned not with doing a little bit of smearing but with finding out the cause of the wrong, analysing the position, and seeking remedies so that we can ensure that decent standards apply in the board room. When the senses of ordinary men and women are outraged about matters of this sort, people ought to be able to look to Parliament and to know that Parliament is taking action, so that the tiny, wealthy elite who are the cause of these reports are made to act decently and honourably on behalf of the nation rather than acting purely on their own behalf.

4 am

The Under-Secretary of State for Trade (Mr. Clinton Davis): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer) on initiating important debates on the last two Consolidated Fund Bills and I share his regret that they have taken place at inconvenient hours. He rose to speak at 8.6 a.m. on the last occasion, and this debate is taking place at an even more inconvenient time.
It is not for me to decide how the business of the House should be arranged, but there have been many reports published in the past five years and it would be taxing our business managers a little hard if we expected to debate each of those reports. However, I am a little surprised that there has not been more pressure for debates on some of them.
I do not complain about the wide-ranging nature of my hon. Friend's speech, but it is not within my fairly confined responsibilities to explore all the avenues that he opened up. The question of tax havens and some of the other interesting matters that he dealt with do not fall within my departmental responsibilities.
My hon. Friend was right to say that industrial democracy is an important facet of the work of my Department. It will be a matter of supreme importance in our legislative programme for the next Parliament. I think that my hon. Friend would agree that the reasons that he gave for the introduction of industrial democracy would not be at the top of his list of priorities. The idea that we should open the doors of board rooms in order to enable a ray of light to shine on the activities of those behind the doors is important, but there is no doubt that the main basis of industrial democracy goes much wider than preventing fraud.
My hon. Friend has been critical of our society and has drawn certain conclusions from the Peachey report and others. I do not complain about that, because we are in the Labour movement not to accept the existing tenets of society but radically to transform society. That is the purpose of a Labour Government. However, I do not believe that it is right to conclude that, because some reports have revealed murky, seedy and meretricious behaviour, all companies behave in that way. My hon. Friend contrasted the behaviour of those involved in the cases that he mentioned with that of ordinary working people going about their daily lives. However, there is also a contrast between some of the murky affairs that have gone on and the way in which the overwhelming majority of companies conduct their business where standards are high and where people do not descend to the depths which were revealed not only in the Lonrho report and the Peachey report but in many others.
My hon. Friend went on to be critical of the way in which this report was drawn. I cannot agree with him on that criticism. Nor do I accept the view that the inspectors here were uncritical or tremendously tepid in the criticism that they offered. There are a number of instances where, particularly in relation to the


board itself, operating as a whole, the inspectors stated their criticisms in no uncertain terms. In paragraph 69 they said:
 We have tended to exonerate each member of the board from any heavy responsibility, though we must later make some individual criticisms. It is not inconsistent for us to criticise the board as a whole as being unduly compliant, uncritical and gullible at certain times and in certain respects.
My main response to my hon. Friend is that the purpose of any inspector's report, based upon section 165 of the Companies Act 1948, is to look into a company's affairs where it has been found necessary to establish an investigation and to examine the facts. In a sense, the opinions that he may draw from those facts are much less important.
The report on the Peachey Property Corporation has provided quite definite conclusions on the facts. My hon. Friend joins issue with the inspectors on the matters of opinion that relate to their conclusions. That is a perfectly reasonable thing for him to do. People are able to reflect in a variety of ways upon those opinions. But there are certain ineluctable facts which emerge. I believe that the inspectors were absolutely right in confining their report within a reasonable limit.
Inspectors face a classic dilemma. How far should they pry into a company's affairs in order to arrive at a reasonable report? Is it necessary to limit their inquiries, or should they pursue every avenue and then perhaps enter a large number of cul-de-sacs? Should they do that at the cost of prolonging the inquiry interminably? It is only right to point out that the report was produced in about 18 months. Many reports take far longer. Should these inspectors have spent five years on their inquiries? Would that have been doing the House of Commons and the community a service? Would the conclusions have been any more valuable?
By looking at the matter in the way that they did—the scope of the inquiry—they made the right judgment. They put it in this way in paragraph 15:
 We have had frequent occasion to remind ourselves of our terms of reference, and in particular to direct ourselves that we were investigating the affairs of the Company, and not the affairs of the nation.

It would have been quite wrong of them to have extended the ambit of their inquiry in order to cover the affairs of the nation. People are entitled to draw their conclusions from the facts they have disclosed.
What the Peachey report demonstrates is what can happen when one man with a charismatic personality exercises autocratic control over a public company. It has not happened for the first time. Here the inspectors were satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the late Sir Eric Miller, when chairman and chief executive, misappropriated large sums of money from the company. That arose through a combination, as the inspectors put it, of a lax system of internal control, whereby personal expenditure was charged to the company's profit and loss account, and acts of deliberate fraud, lying, forgery and theft.
The conduct of company directors is already governed by statute and common law, backed up by the powers of the Department of Trade to investigate under section 109 of the Companies Act 1967 and sections 164 and 165 of the Companies Act 1948. It was section 165 which was invoked in this case.
Due to the influence which Sir Eric exercised over his co-directors, employees and others who are criticised in the report, the action of the natural safeguards against misuse of the company's funds was delayed.
Before the report was received, proposals to strengthen the law were published in the White Paper"The Conduct of Company Directors ", and they form part of the Companies Bill which is currently in Standing Committee.
We are able to derive lessons from many of these reports that we have had and we are deriving lessons from this report because, in the light of it, we introduced this morning amendments to the Companies Bill which are aimed at strengthening the law of financial transactions between companies and their directors.
My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection, who, because I have been involved in work on the Merchant Shipping Bill, very kindly substituted for me on the Companies Bill, made a speech on this issue this morning. He said that what


we are proposing to do as a result of this particular report is to add to the provisions relating to loans to directors, dealt with in clauses 49 to 51, a new set of similar provisions dealing with credit transactions between a director and the company of which he is a director or any of its subsidiary companies. He went on to say that a number of amendments have been tabled in anticipation of new clauses which will define credit transactions and the nature of the controls which will be exercised over such transactions.
The purpose of this is that the term"credit transaction"will include all transactions involving the sale of goods or services on credit, or on an instalment or deferred credit basis, including hire purchase and the use of credit cards. It will also include the practice, highlighted in this report, in which the company makes payments for goods and services which are not bona fide for the purposes of the company but from which a director benefits personally and in respect of which he is liable subsequently to reimburse the company. This is a matter which will be deployed more fully during the debates on the Companies Bill. I hope that that, to some extent at least, reassures my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley.
However, I have to counsel some caution here. It is impossible to close every gap. Company directors should examine whether they are meeting all their responsibilities within the existing legal framework and, in particular, take steps to ensure that internal financial control systems are adequate. The inspectors have comments to make about the impact of the auditors' report on the 1975 accounts, which did not have its intended effect to alert those concerned. The accountancy bodies are currently reviewing auditing practice. We are seeking their views on this point. Indeed, in parenthesis, I add that on 19 March we shall be discussing audit qualifications with the audit practices committee of the Consultative Committee of Accountancy Bodies.
The wide public comment which the report has engendered should foster discussion at all levels of the business community about financial control, and it should add to a number of current debates—for example, the risks involved in combining

the offices of chairman and chief executive and the introduction of audit committees, about which I had a good deal to say not long ago.
Following the death of Sir Eric Miller, I am advised by the Director of Public Prosecutions that no criminal proceedings are contemplated against any person mentioned in the report. Certain civil proceedings are being taken by the company itself, including claims against the estate of the late Sir Eric Miller. My personal view is that, by the normal standards to be expected of people occupying positions of responsibility in business organisations, a number of people named in the report do not appear to emerge with much credit.
The inspectors—this is perhaps a concession—say:
 We doubt that we have detected every defalcation or act of wrongdoing on the part of Sir Eric Miller. To have examined the myriad of small items passing through the records of the company would have been counter-productive both as to the cost of so doing and as to the delay which would have resulted in the production of this report.
As I have indicated before, I believe that approach to be sensible.
It must be remembered that the inspectors were appointed to investigate the affairs of the company, not the personal affairs of Sir Eric Miller, save in so far as they impinged on those of the company. The report raises questions about gifts and favours by companies to those in public life. There can be no doubt but that, in that respect, it serves as a reminder of the kind of conduct of such persons. My hon. Friend said a good deal about that, and I do not blame him, but it is not for me to make comments about that matter in this debate.
I was interested to read the report. I was also interested to read some of the criticisms which went far wider than those made by my hon. Friend. He did not say that this was a whitewash job. He said that the inspectors had said that they might lay themselves open to the accusation that they had done a whitewash job. I think they took that on board, but they made criticisms of the Peachey board.
We must not forget that the late Sir Eric Miller had a charismatic and dominating personality. I can tell my hon. Friend, from many years as an advocate


in the courts dealing with criminal matters, that the powers of influence and persuasion of a confidence trickster are quite remarkable. Such people beguile ordinary citizens into doing the most stupid things. That factor represents part of the backcloth to this kind of case. My hon. Friend did not refer to it, but I am convinced that this matter must be taken into account. The inspectors had the benefit of seeing many of these people, and they took it into account.

Mr. Cryer: I made the point that what was needed to counter the charismatic personality, who would force weaker-minded people on a board to acquiesce in malpractices, was some degree of openness. I suggested that the right of examination of the books by the employees, for example, would enable the other members of the board, because they would have some sharp definition of responsibility, to argue against a very strong-minded chairman that they had this outside responsibility because it would be laid down. That was my comment about one narrow aspect of industrial democracy. That was one point that I made in answer to the companies where that occurs. I am sure that my hon. Friend agrees that this is not universal and that we hope we are dealing with a very small number of such companies.

Mr. Davis: Yes, but I think that my hon. Friend is being a little naive. I do not deny that one of the by-products of greater disclosure of an involvement by the work force in the board can have a beneficial effect far more important than all this. But one cannot ever totally overcome the charismatic influence of an individual, although perhaps it can be mitigated. We know from our experience and daily life that this is true. This sort of influence can be damaging, but it can also be a power for good. A powerful, influential and persuasive politican, trade unionist or industrialists can be a power for good; it is the balance which must be maintained.
At the heart of the matter are the standards of morality and probity that are applied by the individual concerned. If they are abused, the fabric becomes distorted. This is the difficulty we face in any society.
My hon. Friend has been critical of the auditors. Auditors have a difficult task.

They can be misled, particularly if someone is determined to act furtively and to mislead them. Sometimes they err, sometimes they do not probe enough. But the inspectors here dismissed a serious allegation which was made about Price Waterhouse—that it had an improper financial connection with Peachey.
Also, at the end of the day the auditors played a substantial part in bringing matters to a head. They qualified the 1975 accounts—although in a somewhat Delphic way. That is something which, as I have said, is engaging the consideration of the Department and of the accountancy bodies. The ways in which accounts are qualified has to be seriously looked at—not simply in this case but in many others.
The auditors also carried out continuing inquiries into particular transactions, in conjunction with the growing suspicions of Lord Mais and other board members, and it was that which led to the denouement. As regards the generally lavish and extravagant standard of Sir Eric Miller's expenditure, the inspectors criticise the board rather than the auditors. I believe that that is where the criticism should lie. They argue that it is for the directors of a company to judge what is good for their company and that in the normal course the auditors should take their word for it.
I conclude as I began, by congratulating my hon. Friend on raising the issue. We should not neglect debates on these matters. I should welcome them. I congratulate him on his powers of endurance. I congratulate him less on the length of his speech—but who am I to complain? Nevertheless, this has been a valuable airing of an important topic.

Question put and agreed to

Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed to a Committee of the whole House; immediately considered in Committee, pursuant to the Order of the House this day; reported, without amendment.

Motion made, and Question, That the Bill be now read the Third time, put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 93 (Consolidated Fund Bills), and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE (EMERGENCY PROVISIONS) (SCOTLAND) BILL

Ordered,
That in respect of the Administration of Justice (Emergency Provisions) (Scotland) Bill, notices of amendments, new clauses and new schedules to be moved in Committee may be accepted by the Clerks at the Table before the Bill has been read a Second time.—[Mr. Thomas Cox.]

LIGHTHOUSE SERVICE (PAY)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Thomas Cox]

4.26 a.m.

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: I regret that I must initiate this Adjournment debate at this hour, but it is absolutely necessary to do so.
I shall state the matter briefly. Three of my constituents believe that they are suffering a savage injustice. They are Archibald Gray, Graham Simpson and Thomas Tomson. The purpose of the debate is to draw attention to the fact that those three gentlemen, chief engineers who received promotion to the position of assistant superintendents in the lighthouse service in Scotland, now see that chief engineers are apparently earning £3,000 a year more than they are.
Four years ago the assistant superintendents earned more than the chief engineers, as was appropriate for the more senior posts, but now not only has the lead enjoyed by the assistant superintendents been lost but the chief engineers are being paid £3,000 a year more. The assistant superintendents were directed ashore to what were at the time superior posts compared with the position of chief engineer in the service of the Northern Lighthouse Board, to which they had been recruited because of their Department of Trade qualifications.
Promotions within the board are on a seniority basis, with a consequent salary increase. Subsequent details of full maritime awards and the unwanted and opposed attachment to a Civil Service grade have meant that the lead which they once enjoyed over contemporaries, because of promotion and seniority, has disappeared.
There is a second issue. Other quasi-Government services, such as Trinity House, the Irish lighthouse service, Post Office cable ships and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, which have ex-marine staff in shore appointments, have been able to maintain a differential. My constituents are asking only for the same consideration.
There is not an exact parallel between my constituents' position and other positions in the United Kingdom, but it appears that there may have emerged an element of discrimination. perhaps unintentional, but none the less discrimination. On the basis of comparability they are not being treated the same as other people in similar, or approximately similar, positions in the United Kingdom.
It is fair to put on record the statement issued to me by the assistant secretary of the Merchant Navy and Airline Officers' Association, who wrote:
 This Association is aware of the serious anomaly in salary differentials which has arisen in respect of members employed as Assistant Lighthouse Superintendents—by the Northern Lighthouse Board.
It appears that the situation has arisen at least partly because these members' employment conditions ceased in 1975 to be linked to National Maritime Board awards. However, the problem existed prior to 1975, but negotiations over some years have failed to get it rectified.
Now he comes to the crux of the matter:
 We are also pursuing a claim in respect of all members employed by the Northern Lighthouse Board for parity with their counterparts in Trinity House and this matter is due to be considered by the Central Arbitration Committee on 3 April this year.
We are continuing in our efforts to obtain a solution to this totally unsatisfactory situation and about which our members are quite understandably incensed.
It is relevant also that the salary and pension prospects of the assistant superintendents which they had expected to enjoy have been unjustly and arbitrarily diminished because of their misfortune in being promoted from posts which they would have been happy to enjoy until the end of their service. As my constituents wrote on 3rd July last year,
 Our initial employment by the Northern Lighthouse Board which gave the prospect of ultimate promotion ashore certainly did not imply that we would be worse off salary-wise and at retirement than our contemporaries who were lucky or unlucky enough not to receive this promotion ashore.


I put this to the Minister. If the Prime Minister had invited him to accept his job as Minister and said"I must ask you, so that you may secure this promotion, to receive £3,000 per year less than other Members of Parliament who are not Ministers receive ", I should have been extremely surprised if he would have accepted that offer. But what happened in this case was that when my constituents received their promotion they did not realise that it would have such an unfavourable outcome.
On 13th October 1978 my constituents wrote again:
 We reiterate again our original claim that because we were promoted ashore in the interests of the Lighthouse Board service, we have suffered greatly financially in comparison with our colleagues who are still in the lighthouse tenders. We claim a miscarriage of justice and call upon you to take the matter on to the Floor of the House of Commons.
Even then, I hoped that it would not be necessary to have this debate in the middle of the night, and I wrote to the Secretary of State for Scotland, who replied on 6 December:
 Although the difficulty affects the employees of a Scottish-based organisation, it does appear to me to be more of a general pay question which will require to be considered when pay policy permits.
I appreciate that the Minister may be able to do little about this matter tonight. In a parliamentary answer which he gave on 16 February, he said:
 Recent pay awards secured by officers of the Merchant Navy have distorted pay relativities within the Northern Lighthouse Board's management structure. Adjustment is a matter for negotiation between the unions concerned and the Northern Lighthouse Board, within the framework of pay policy."—[Official Report,16 February 1979; Vol. 962, c.665]
I hope, however, that there is one thing that the Minister and I may be able to do, and that is to draw the attention of the Northern Lighthouse Board to the fact that promotion has been contrary to the interests of the three persons concerned and has led to a loss of salary of £3,000 a year, which is bad for the morale of the assistant superintendents concerned.
I think it fair to say that they should either be offered back their old jobs or at least be offered the rate for the job. The Minister, I feel sure, will pass on the deep concern felt by my constituents at their unsatisfactory situation so

that it can, if possible, be rectified this April and they will, one hopes, be paid the rate for their job.

4.34 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Trade (Mr. Clinton Davis): The hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton) has, like my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer) in the immediately preceding debate, shown a quite remarkable power of endurance, and that he has stayed behind to raise this matter at such a late hour is a tribute to his work as a constituency Member of Parliament—though I must add that I think that his analogy relating to Ministers' pay is one which is better not pursued. Suffice it to say that we have corresponded on this issue. The hon. Gentleman also put down questions. I fear that I am not able to do more this morning than repeat that this is not a matter for which there is ministerial responsibility. But it may be helpful if I elaborate on the matter a little more than has been possible in the correspondence.
The lighthouse services are not funded from moneys voted by this House. They are funded from the general lighthouse fund which is fed from dues paid by shipping entering ports. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade is the custodian of this fund. In the exercise of this function he can give or withhold approval to proposals by the lighthouse authorities on, among other things, changes in the pay and conditions of service of their staff.
After negotiation with the appropriate union, a lighthouse authority may think it appropriate to grant a pay increase to certain of its staff. It must then seek the approval of my Department. But the Department is not a party to the negotiations. The departmental function is to agree, or not to agree, whatever proposal is put to it by the authority.
In the case of the assistant superintendents, the history, as I understand it, is that agreement was reached between the Merchant Navy and Airline Officers' Association and the Northern Lighthouse Board, effective from June 1975. This was that the men's pay should be assessed on the analogue of the professional and technical class of the Civil Service instead of, as formerly, on a Merchant Navy


analogue. At the time this gave the men a pay increase. 
However, the parties agreed to the incorporation of a clause under which the analogue with the Civil Service professional and technical class could be looked at again. It was said:
 The MNAOA reserve the right to raise the matter of this graded structure with reference to the pay of the Commissioners' Chief Engineers Afloat, when free to do so within the terms of the Government's pay policy.
I am told that no such approach has been made by the unions. Such pressure as there has been is from three men as individuals, through the hon. Member.
The Northern Lighthouse Board's view is that there is an agreement and that this agreement stands until the other signatory seeks to invoke the reopener clause. Any reopening of the matter can take place only within the framework of pay policy as it stands at the time.
Furthermore, the Northern Lighthouse Board believes that the present analogue with the professional and technical grade of the Civil Service is the appropriate one, having regard to the nature of the men's work and responsibilities. It is open to the union to try to persuade the Northern Lighthouse Board that it is wrong. Only if it succeeds will there be an issue for me to consider.
This will be simply whether to give consent to the change, which would entail additional cost falling on the general lighthouse fund. At this stage I am simply not involved. The only view that I can express is that it is not right for any group of workers to seek to move from one pay analogue to another and back again in a comparatively short period merely as the process of negotiation put one or the other analogue at a temporary advantage. The settlement date for the Civil Service is 1 April. Therefore, another change in the relativities is likely from that date.
I was interested to hear the hon. Member suggest that the union may be pursuing a claim or has already initiated a claim for comparability before the Cen-

tral Arbitration Committee under the provisions of schedule 11 to the Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act 1978.
I invite the hon. Member's attention to a letter addressed to him on 13 October 1978 by Mr. Gray, one of the men involved in the dispute. In this letter, of which a copy was sent to me, Mr. Gray said:
 It has been our contention for some time that to take our claim under schedule 11 of the Employment Protection Act 1975 would be of little avail as we cannot directly compare our conditions of service with any other organisation because the Northern Lighthouse Board operates a completely different system of work to either Trinity House or the Irish Lighthouse service—the normal comparisons.
We are directly recruited from the Northern Lighthouse Board Tenders and promoted ashore—no other organisation does this and consequently no comparisons can be drawn.
To sum up, my Department has learnt something about this matter, not least from the representations that the hon. Member has made. But my Department is in no sense a party to the dispute. Indeed, I am doubtful whether one should properly refer to a dispute when neither of the signatories to the relevant agreement is seeking to reopen it. On the information before me, I believe that the Northern Lighthouse Board's attitude is reasonable. Even if I thought otherwise, I could not direct the board to change its attitude.
Our function in the Department of Trade is clear-cut. If at any time the Northern Lighthouse Board should be converted to the view that its assistant superintendents' pay link with the Civil Service professional and technical class should be changed, the board would have to present a case to my Department for doing that. Then, and only then, would this be a question for my consideration. Until then, I regret to say—perhaps it ought to be not"I regret to say"but"I have to say "—I have no part to play in the matter.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty minutes to Five o'clock a.m